Copycat
by EmilyChelidon
Summary: Charlie discovers a pattern linking closed cases. When Don investigates, events take an unexpected and dangerous turn... Story now complete. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Notes:_

_Hello, welcome and thank you for checking in!_

_First of all, this story would never have reached its current state without the invaluable and selfless help of OughtaKnowBetter. She inspired me to complete this story, beta read for me (twice!) and taught me so much about writing. Thank you, OughtaKnowBetter! (If you want to read some truly fantastic work, check out her profile!)_

_This story is set a few weeks after the episode Sniper Zero in Season 1. However, it does feature Colby and Megan, because I think they're awesome...so please forgive this lapse of canon timing! _

_This story is complete and I will be posting a chapter every day until it's all up. This is my first Numb3rs story. If you want to leave a comment or review, I'd love to hear what you think! _

_Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy it! :) ~Emily_

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_Fear. A blinding, crippling fear that sent his heart beating in triple-time and threatened to take over his mind._

_His hands scrabbled senselessly over the black asphalt and shattered glass, his whole body trembling. Gunshots erupted, assaulting his ears. Someone had just tried to shoot him. Seven out of the eight sniper victims had died. Statistically speaking, he was dead. _

_The danger had just never seemed real. As he had pointed out to Larry so flippantly, he was more likely to be mauled to death by a bear than to be killed by a sniper. Yet he had failed to factor in that placing himself in an area where he had just mathematically predicted the sniper's next attack, pointing out his most likely location, and being the only person in the entire area not wearing a bullet-proof vest, significantly altered the odds in the sniper's favour. Stupid, stupid._

_He saw the black muzzle of the rifle appear the window, exactly where he had predicted. Then Don's yell, the impact of David knocking him to the ground, the scream of the bullet as it ripped past his cheek and shattered the car window. He should be dead. _

_There was blood on the ground. Fear choked him. He pushed himself up, looked down. There was a gaping hole in his chest. _

Charlie's eyes shot open. He gasped, pushing himself into a seated position, heart pounding, sweat dripping into his eyes, trembling. It was dark. He ripped open his shirt, stared down at his chest. No bullet hole, no blood.

He let out a long, shuddering breath and buried his head in his hands, pushing at his eyes as if his hands could literally wipe away the image. It seemed so real. Then he swung his feet to the concrete floor and made for the light switch. The garage sprang into illumination. His work on P vs NP covered the multitude of blackboards. He walked back over to one of the boards, pushed sweat-soaked curls back, picked up a piece of chalk. He'd just sat down for a minute…had not meant to fall asleep. The nightmare was always the same.

For the first few weeks he had thought he was fine. Even been proud of shaking it off so easily, getting shot at, all in a day's work for Don, so Charlie could handle it too, right?

Then the dreams had started. For the last three nights, several times a night, he relieved that moment of abject, paralyzing terror. The only difference was that in real life, the bullet had missed. But if Don hadn't shouted, if David hadn't moved exactly when he did…

Delayed shock, delayed reaction, the rational part of his mind tried to tell him. Unfortunately that part was not as strong as the primitive instinct screaming at him to run, to hide, to get away from the perceived threat that continued to prey on him.

He shook his head, raised his chalk to the blackboard, and began to fill his mind with numbers. Numbers left no room for emotion, no room for pain. Numbers were safe.

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"Charlie?" Alan Eppes stood at the door. There was no response from his youngest son. He was doing the same thing as he had when Alan had headed off to bed the night before – scribbling frantically at one of the many chalkboards hanging and leaning around the garage. Still dressed in yesterday's rumpled shirt and jeans, Charlie's face was pale and dark shadows ringed his eyes.

"Charlie," he repeated, raising his voice slightly. Years of experience had taught him that it was no good expecting Charlie to respond immediately when his head was buried in a problem. "Charlie…" he walked towards his son, concern growing on his face. Even for Charlie, this was unusually unresponsive. He touched Charlie's shoulder.

Charlie jumped violently, the chalk tracing a jagged line down the board as he spun around. Wide dark eyes met his father's face.

"Geez, dad, you startled me," Charlie gasped. He took a deep breath, tried to look back to the chalkboard. "I'm working…"

"Charlie, you've been working all night, and all yesterday," Alan interrupted, his voice rising. "You didn't even eat the sandwich Amita brought you. And you just about had a heart attack when I tried to talk to you. What is it that's so important?"

"Just let me…" he turned back to the board, already sinking into the problem.

"Charlie, listen when I am speaking to you. This is P vs NP, isn't it?" Alan recognized the work, though he could not follow it. The fact that Charlie was working on this particular problem again worried him. He knew through long experience that P vs NP held some special fascination for his son. Unfortunately, it was a fascination that could so easily tip over into obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

"Yes, and I am trying to follow through on an important expression, so if you would just let me finish…" Charlie rubbed out the scored line with his shirt sleeve and continued to write a string full of symbols and summations. Alan sighed. He couldn't reprimand his son the way he could when Charlie was a kid. No matter how much he wanted to snatch the chalk out of Charlie's hand and send him to his room, it just wasn't possible to do so when his youngest had become a twenty-eight year old, multiple-doctorate holding Professor.

"Why are you working on this again? You said you were going to focus on your cognitive emergence thing."

"Dad!" Charlie snapped. "I need to work on _this_, okay? I need to focus. I need quiet. Leave me alone."

Alan gave up. There was no speaking to Charlie when he got like this. Although…maybe there _was_ something he could do - call Don. He knew Charlie had been doing some on-and-off consulting for the FBI, so maybe Don had some idea of what had tipped Charlie over the edge this time.

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"He is?" Don swore. Of course, he knew what had set his little brother off. By mutual agreement he and Charlie had decided not to tell their father how close Charlie had come to being the next statistic. It would just make Alan panic, they knew, and after all neither of them had been harmed and the shooter was dead. What Alan didn't know couldn't hurt him, right?

Don battled down a mixture of annoyance and concern. Why couldn't Charlie just behave normally? Hell, Don had been fired at more times than he could keep track of – even been winged a couple of times – and he didn't spiral into the mathematical version of panic attacks.

He pushed the unjust thoughts away. This was his kid brother, not an experienced agent trained to deal with the psychological effects of being shot at. He couldn't expect Charlie to behave like Don himself would. He kicked himself for not remembering that Charlie might not be able to shrug it off so easily.

"He'll be okay…look, I'll come over later and talk to him," Don promised his father. A beeping noise in his ear alerted him to another call. "Sorry, I got a call waiting. See ya later," he added, and switched to the incoming call. "Eppes?" His face went serious. "Okay…"

Two heads – one blond, one dark – looked up from files and forms. The tone of their boss's voice was enough to make Agents David Sinclair and Colby Granger pause in their work. Don snapped the phone closed.

"We got another shooting."

"What?" Colby couldn't believe it. "But we took that guy down! The copycat attacks were supposed to stop!"

"Looks like nobody told that to this guy." Don said grimly as the memory of the day they'd finally caught the serial sniper rose in his mind.

_He's here somewhere. _

_Don scanned the windows of the tall office blocks surrounding the square. They'd cleared the area of civilians – the sniper wasn't gonna take another victim, not today, not on Don's watch. All they had to do was stop the guy from getting away. With teams in every alley and a chopper in the air, Don was confident that today was the day. Today they'd get this thing in the bag. No more shootings, no more deaths. _

_The sound of an engine drew his attention from the LAPD officer he was speaking to. He glanced around as a car door slammed. _

_No. No, no, no! _

_His heart seemed to freeze. Charlie couldn't be here, couldn't be wandering around the empty square predicting tangents and angles in his mind. Couldn't be taking down notes on exactly where the bullet that would kill him would come from._

"_Charlie! Get down!" His voice was hoarse with horror. He shoved the officer out of the way. It was faster than he'd ever run in his life, but it felt like running through glue. _

_It wasn't enough._

_BLAM. _

_Charlie was on the ground. Hit? Every gunshot death Don had ever seen flashed before his eyes. Charlie's face superimposed on each victim. _

His thoughts were brought back to the present by David muttering something unprintable under his breath. Probably reliving the very same moment, Don realized. He shook his head, clearing the memory away.

This was unbelievable. After the Bureau had caught the perpetrator and closed the case, people were finally beginning to think the streets of L.A were as safe as they'd ever been. Now this had to happen. Don sighed. "Look, get down to the crime scene and check it out, ok? I'm sure it's just a leftover from the copycat virus thing but I'm gonna pick up Charlie on the way, see what he thinks."

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"Hey Charlie –"

"Can't you see I'm working-?" Charlie yanked headphones out of his ears and glared at his brother. Don blinked. Okay, so now he could see what Dad meant. It was unlike Charlie to greet you by biting your head off. He swallowed the stung retort that rose to his lips. _Stay calm._

"Yeah, but I've hit a problem and I need your help," he said. It was a calculated remark. Charlie could never resist helping Don out.

Charlie crossed his arms and scowled at the chalkboard. Well, at least he wasn't scribbling strings of esoteric symbols any more. That was as good an invitation as any.

"There was just a sniper attack. Someone used a hunting rifle to shoot a man on the street from a nearby building." Don watched as the scowl dropped from Charlie's face, to be replaced with a look of horror. He could see the implications flashing through his brother's brilliant mind.

"You think it's another serial attack."

"That's what it looks like."

Charlie shook his head. "Another innocent person dead…" he wasn't speaking to Don. He looked at the ceiling as if the answer were written up there among the hanging chalkboards and cobwebs.

"I'm sure you caught the right guy, Don. The rash of copycats might take a while to fade out even though so many of the attackers have now been caught…people still have the hunting rifle idea implanted. It could even be an anomaly, not related to the previous attacks at all." Charlie was obviously trying to match Don's calm demeanour, but he couldn't fool Don. His brother was scared stiff.

Don tried to see it Charlie's way. "Look, I know it was scary back at the square but the crime scene has been secured and we really need to know if this shooting fits the serial killer's pattern. You know the killer never sticks around, you've been to the scenes before…there's no danger."

"I know," Charlie snapped, but the chalk in his clenched fist was beginning to crumble. Don looked at him, taking in the bruised-looking shadows under Charlie's eyes, the tension that radiated from his brother's wiry body, and started to rethink the idea. Charlie really didn't look so good. Don had thought that getting him out of the garage and into the real world would snap Charlie out of this state. Now Don was having second thoughts. Maybe it was better if Charlie didn't come, after all.

"Look - if you really don't want to come, I can get photos -"

"No." Don watched his brother take a steadying breath, visibly forcing himself to calm down. "Observation is an important tool in data analysis..." Charlie grabbed his jacket from the couch.

"Okay then." Don nodded and let the way out to the black SUV, pushing his sunglasses back over his eyes, masking the concern.

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Charlie's hands were shaking. He stared at them, willing them to stop. When they wouldn't he sat on them and gazed blindly out of the car window. This irrational fear was just ridiculous. Don needed him to help with this case. He shouldn't be such a coward.

The car pulled up and Don jumped out, Charlie hesitating just a moment too long before doing the same. As usual the perimeter was surrounded by yellow tape and Charlie followed Don as his brother flashed his badge at the LAPD officer before ducking under the security line. Charlie showed the officer his own ID, his eyes darting around the scene. Now that he was here, his earlier fears were beginning to recede. The reality of things was actually a lot less scary than his own imagination made them, and the details of the case were flowing through his mind, banishing the memory of the sniper shooting at him. _The fear created by the mind can overwhelm rationality_, he mused. _Could that be expressed in an equation…?_

Don had been right. Getting out of the garage was a good idea. Charlie studied the tape that outlined where the body had fallen, trying not to look too hard at the red-brown stain in the chest area. Then he turned, squinting into the sunlight, using the angle of the body placement and mentally calculating the ballistics and atmospheric conditions to determine the most likely location for the sniper. He glanced up to the resulting rooftop and spotted someone moving up there.

His heart jumped. _Who…._

_Oh. Of course. _

Agent Edgerton might not be a mathematician, but he sure did know how to pick a sniper's nest.

The pieces were falling into place. He turned to Don. "It's not a continuation of the serial trend. Despite the fact that the shot killed, it's actually a low skill level shooting. Remember what I showed you about regression to the mean? This attack is below the mean skill level of the serial sniper's attacks." He pointed out the rooftop location, a low empty building that was close to the street, with little activity in the area for the shooter to worry about. "The viral behaviour he started will take a while to fade out. If I graphed the attacks now, you'd see the upward curve level out along the y axis as attacks grow more infrequent."

Don nodded. "That's what we were hoping. Thanks, buddy," he said briefly and moved a few paces towards Megan, waving the rest of his team to come over.

Megan had a shadow today, a fresh-faced, dainty-looking girl whose flak vest and service piece were at odds with school-girlish bangs, barrettes and sparkly fingernails. Trainee Shelley Ramirez looked like she couldn't be more than sixteen, but Don knew that couldn't be true. Quantico didn't accept anyone under the age of twenty-three, for a start. To make it here to the LA office, Trainee Ramirez had already completed sixteen weeks of intensive training – including that which gave her the right to carry the Bureau-issued pistol on her belt - and if she held her own whilst shadowing an active team, she would graduate in a couple of weeks.

Don scowled. He'd managed to slide out of having trainees in the past, but the AD had finally caught on to him. He thought it must be the AD's idea of payback, giving him FBI-Barbie.

"No ID," Megan's face was glum. Behind her, Trainee Ramirez nodded agreement, her ponytail bobbing. "Nobody seems to know who he is. They're sending him to the County General morgue for autopsy."

Colby came up, holding a packet of something between gloved fingers.

"Check this out. This was on the guy."

"That what I think it is?"

"If you're thinking _drugs,_ then yeah," Colby grimaced. "We'll get it processed and ID'd down at the lab, but my money's on Rainbow's End."

"Rainbow's End?"

"It's the street name for dextrodiphetamine," the trainee piped up. Don looked at her in surprise. "New trip of choice for over-privileged teens. Sells on the street for a hundred bucks a gram." She shrugged a little awkwardly at Don's questioning stare.

"She's right," Colby agreed. "It's just come on the market. Janssen's team have been working on it. Mike was telling me about it just the other day. Some drug lord holds the monopoly and is making a real killing, only they can't figure out which one."

"Okay," Don let it go for now. "Charlie says this one's not part of the serial trend, so let's look into the drug-related angle. Maybe we get to hand over to Janssen. Colby, get that down to the lab. Oh, and take Ramirez with you, since she knows so much about it." The trainee flushed, but followed Colby.

"Hey, be nice," Megan told him.

"What? –" A beeping from Don's pocket alerted him to an incoming call. He pulled out his cell and flipped it open. Megan sighed and headed back over to the security line.

Glancing around as he put his phone to his ear, Don spotted Charlie, still standing by the mark where the body had lain. His brother was staring blankly into space, completely zoned out. _No doubt he's thinking of some crazy math problem, and having a lot more fun with it than I am with this damn case. _

He focused back on the voice in his ear and scowled at the message the caller was giving him.

"I'll be right there." He snapped the phone closed and strode over to Charlie. "Hey, Chuck?" he watched Charlie's attention zone back in from whatever tangential plane it had been on. "There's another case where I'm needed. I get to leave my people here while I assess the new crime scene." He shoved his phone back into his pocket. "I wanted to drop you back home, but it's well out of the way-"

Charlie interrupted him. "It's okay Don, I can come with you. Maybe I can help," he offered.

Don frowned; he had been going to ask Colby or David to drive Charlie home. Then again, this particular case was already sounding like something Charlie could give a lot of insight to. And, he convinced himself, a new problem was likely just what Charlie needed.

"Okay. You're on," he nodded and led the way back to the SUV.

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	2. Chapter 2

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They ended up getting stuck in traffic. Don frowned, trying not to let the delay bug him, resisting the sneaky voice that urged him to turn on the sirens. There was no need for that, the case wasn't that urgent. He should be used to the gridlock by now. Why did it still annoy him?

"Don, if you take the next exit we can get round via Hills and 86th," Charlie piped up. Glancing across Don saw that his brother was already plugged into his laptop, probably to check the online traffic cameras – or there was always the possibility of the top-security NSA satellite images. He noted Charlie's colour was much better and the haunted expression had faded from his eyes. Good. That was one thing about being a big brother, knowing how to snap your kid brother out of a funk. Dad had nothing to worry about.

"Thanks buddy. I should take you with me all the time. You're better than the sat-nav," he teased.

"I should hope so," accompanied by a sniff. "Sat-nav systems are based on frankly out-of-date GPS data and an application of Dijkstra's algorithm that-"

"Hold it! My brain has more important things to remember than just why the sat-nav loves to send us round in circles," Don interrupted. He pulled off the freeway at snail's pace and sure enough the roads freed up as soon as he turned onto 86th. Charlie raised his head from the screen.

"So what's going on?"

"They didn't tell me much over the phone but there's a body on the tracks, some kind of suspicious circumstances. We'll know more when we get there."

Charlie was back to his laptop screen already, tapping away at who knows what. Didn't the guy ever stop working? At that thought Don had to grin. He was one to talk.

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In many ways it was similar to the scene they'd just left. The LAPD patrol cars with the top lights flashing, the crime scene tape, the gaggle of morbidly fascinated bystanders and the inevitable media trying to get their cameras and notepads past the security line. Don scowled at the victim being examined by forensics. He was getting a sense of déjà vu, and it wasn't just from the generic crime scene look. Something wasn't right here.

He became aware that Charlie was beside him, his eyes fixed upon the mutilated corpse that lay near the tracks.

"Charlie, I told you to stay in the car until I called you," he said, grasping his brother's shoulder and turning him away from the gruesome image. "You don't have to look at that…"

"I'm not going to just sit in the car and wait for you," Charlie protested, swallowing hard in an attempt to keep calm, to back up his statement with evidence that, like Don, he could handle anything a crime scene could throw at him. "Besides," he glanced over his shoulder at the victim by the tracks, resisting the tug on his arm as Don attempted to frogmarch him back to the SUV, "doesn't this seem familiar to you?"

Don stopped and turned Charlie around to face him. "Since you mention it, it does. You, too?"

"Don, this is the same as the Hughes case that you closed a couple months ago – and I mean the _exact_ same. Remember I consulted for you on the placement of the victims on the rails that proved the body was already dead when the train hit, ruling out suicide?"

Don nodded - Charlie had nailed it. "Yeah, you're right. But Hughes is behind bars, and will be for the next few decades." He paused, staring at his brother, the same thought running through both their heads. "No way. Another copycat crime? After three months?"

Charlie had that anxious frown on his face, one Don recognized. It was the one right before Charlie would say he wanted Don to provide him with at least a million obscure files in the attempt to get more data.

"Don, I need more data…" Don almost allowed himself a grin. _Not the time for it, Eppes_, he chastised himself and tuned back in to Charlie.

"Two unrelated copycat murders in one day, probabilistically that's an extremely low chance, in the realms of six million to one," his brother was saying. Charlie's voice faded and his eyes took on a distant look, "well, unless you took into account...maybe along the lines of five point eight oh three…seven…okay, call it six million to one," he finished hurriedly, noticing the frustration growing on Don's face. "Anyway, the point is that these two copycat murders could be connected. I'll access the FBI databases, see what I come up with?" he looked questioningly at his brother.

"Go for it. If you find anything more let me know. If we can connect this with the old case I'll re-open it." Don agreed. Anything was better than that wretched P thing.

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Tousled head bent over his work, Charlie was barely visible behind the tall stacks of paper that threatened to engulf his desk. The Professor was grading papers at top speed. Being a math genius definitely came in handy for many tasks, including this one – Charlie had no need to tally up marks or work out the percentage and according grade. It took just a brief glance at each page and he had the entire score ready to scrawl upon the front of the exam. He even knew exactly how each score would affect each student's grade point average. Easy as breathing.

A knock on the doorframe made him look up, a distracted frown dissolving into a welcoming smile as he recognised Agent Reeves. "Hey, Megan. Come in!" He stood up as Megan entered the cluttered office, tailed by a young blonde girl that Charlie vaguely remembered seeing at the scene of the sniper attack yesterday.

"Hey Charlie," Megan smiled back. "This is Shelley Ramirez – Shelley, Dr Charlie Eppes. Shelley's in training – she's shadowing our team for a week." Charlie came around his desk to shake the blonde's hand and found that her grip was firmer than many men he knew, belying her petite build. He supposed he shouldn't really be surprised. Even to make it this far in her training, Shelley Ramirez had to be a lot tougher than she looked.

"Pleased to meet you, Shelley."

"Likewise." Wow. Charlie blinked. That smile that looked like it belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine.

He dragged his attention back to Megan. "What can I do for you?"

"IT intercepted a coded message this morning – it was sent out of the FBI but it isn't one of our codes. Our guys couldn't make head or tail of it so Don wanted you to have a look," she passed him a slim folder, which Charlie opened, flicking through the pages inside. "Don't know where it's going, don't know who it came from – apparently it came with some kind of embedded self-destruct virus that destroyed its trail as soon as it was caught." Megan shrugged. "But they managed to save the actual message before that went too."

Charlie glanced up to see that Trainee Ramirez was nodding earnestly at Megan's words. Her ponytail bounced every time she nodded, putting Charlie in mind of those bobbing-head animals that adorned thirty-two percent of the dashboards of the cars parked in the student lot.

Megan, noticing where Charlie's eyes were, leaned forward, making sure Charlie's attention was on the task she was giving him. "Don said it might be really important – we shouldn't be sending out encrypted messages that aren't an approved FBI code."

Charlie tore his eyes back to the paper.

"Well, at a glance I can tell you that it's a multi-level encryption, possibly asymmetric, definitely Gaussian. I can already see something here…and here," he tapped the paper at certain symbols, "that should give me a starting point."

"How long do you think it will take?"

Charlie looked at the ceiling. How long could he get away with? Enough time to finish grading before he had an army of over-zealous students banging down his door and demanding their marks? "Does Don want it prioritized over what I'm currently doing for him?"

"Yeah," Megan glanced distractedly at Shelley Ramirez, who was now staring unabashedly through her bangs at her.

Charlie held back a grin. "Okay, I'll work on it tonight. I should have it done before midnight, unless I hit any setbacks. Tell Don I'll call him." Charlie balanced the folder on top of a teetering stack of _Acta Mathematica _journals and sat back down at the desk,already beginning to re-immerse himself in the exams.

_Another hour should do it. _

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Don stepped out of the elevator and headed towards his cubicle. The low angle of the morning sun cast a bright glow directly into the bullpen and set a haze of dust motes dancing. The place was quiet, only a couple of agents and administrative assistants tapping away at their keyboards or staring with glazed eyes at computer screens. Reaching his desk, Don shrugged out of his formal jacket and threw it over the back of the computer chair. Like Charlie he wore jeans when he could possibly get away with it, but today's agenda included several meetings and a court hearing in the afternoon where he had to provide evidence, calling for the well-cut dark suit, dress shirt and tie.

Movement in the second conference room caught his eye and he looked across. Despite the tinted windows that dulled out the finer details he instantly recognized the frenetic, jerky movements that were unique to his little brother as Charlie darted between several computer screens, whiteboard and table laden with files. Even as he watched Charlie apparently ran out of whiteboard space and, after casting around briefly, began scribbling in glass marker on the window between the conference room and the corridor. Don watched the numbers and symbols appear in reverse along the glass and the idle thought crossed his mind that the equations actually looked more comprehensible this way round.

He headed across the narrow aisle and knocked on the open doorframe. When no answer came, Don looked closer and realised Charlie was wearing earbuds, a tiny mp3 player clipped to his blazer lapel. _Charlie has to get his daily dose of adrenaline sometime. Who said anything about outgrowing sibling rivalry?_ Don grinned in anticipation and stepped into the room, intercepting his brother as he spun from computer screen to newly-commandeered window. As he had expected, Charlie started, clutching the marker to his chest.

"Hey, Don," Charlie yanked the earphones out, trying to regain his composure with a casual greeting, knowing as he did so that he wasn't fooling anybody. Don grinned but mercifully declined to comment.

"What'cha doing here Charlie? Don't you have classes today?" he asked.

Charlie scowled. "My first lecture is at 9 which still gives me another 65 minutes to work on this, allowing 42 minutes for morning traffic."

"Oh yeah?" Apparently Charlie's already multiple talents had expanded to predicting what traffic was going to be like on the Santa Ana parking lot that entertained delusions of being a freeway. "What's all this about? You got the code I sent Megan with?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty close with that. I set a computer up at CalSci running it through some partial Rejewski sequences last night and it should be done in a couple of hours. While it's doing that I'm working on finding a connection between those two copycat cases we had yesterday – the sniper and the railway incident," Charlie tapped on one of the computers and the screen flashed up on the projector, showing a table with information pulled from several FBI databases. "I set some search algorithms going earlier," Don briefly wondered what ungodly hour Charlie had come in this morning, "and modified a Baines Function to filter out some of the chatter but it wasn't until I thought of using a modified group theory approach that I noticed that the second constant could actually be applied to-"

"Whoa-" Don interrupted in alarm, holding up his hands. In his enthusiasm it was hard for Charlie to remember that on the whole, FBI agents – his own brother included - were generally far more interested in his results than his methods. "English, buddy."

"Okay," Don observed frustration flit across his brother's face as Charlie bit back a torrent of math-speak. "What it comes down to is that nine of the murders committed in the past three months, have the exact same MO's as previous FBI cases in which the perpetrator was either imprisoned or killed in a firefight. They're all copied from previous one-off crimes." As Charlie pulled up images from each crime scene, Don frowned.

"Wait – all of these are cases I worked on."

Charlie nodded rapidly. "That's the thing. The previous cases were all, without exception, handled by your team, Don. You closed all the old cases, but in the nine new cases, there hasn't been a single perpetrator apprehended."

This made Don's eyebrows go up. "Then these copycat cases could all be committed by the same person."

"Not only that. They were all cases I consulted on. Actually those two factors are the only significant things linking these cases."

"Significant meaning…"

"Well, disregarding the incidental stuff. All the cases were processed through this department, filed with the admin people, that sort of thing - stuff that happens with every case."

Don stared at the projected image of Charlie's laptop screen, scanning through the list of names and numbers that the little machine had produced. "Hold on a minute – what about that one? Can you bring up the list of admin personnel?" He waited while his brother tapped a few keys. Another list sprang up on the projector screen.

"Oh – I see what you mean…an Agent Adrian Madden signed off on every single one of these cases."

"Agent Madden – he's a field agent, isn't he? What's he doing signing off for admin?" Don scowled. "I'll check it out in a minute. But Charlie, why haven't we heard about all this copycat stuff before?"

"Because your team hasn't handled any of the new cases, up till the sniper attack yesterday, which you guys were called in on because of the recent serial attacks. Agents on other teams wouldn't recognize crimes they hadn't worked on. Nobody would find the serial connection because the MO is completely different for each case - he's copying old cases that had no relation to each other."

Don considered this, frowning. Something was wrong with this picture. There was a piece missing, something they weren't seeing.

"The good part is - there is a pretty clear pattern in the cases our new perpetrator is choosing." Charlie darted over to a spare bit of window and uncapped his yellow glass marker again. He drew a horizontal line with a date at one end. "This is two years ago. The copycat hasn't picked on any crimes earlier than this." The fact that this was around the time Charlie had begun consulting for Don on a regular basis hung unspoken in the air. "And this when the first copycat crime was committed."

Charlie dated the end of the first line and drew another underneath it to represent the copycat crimes. He started making marks along the first line at various intervals, then took a red marker from his pocket and connected these marks with points on the second line. Don watched closely. He could see the pattern that was emerging as the red connecting lines began to criss-cross, intersecting the yellow timelines until all nine crimes were marked.

"I wrote a program that will enable me to find the next crime the copycat will copy," Charlie finished. Don stepped forward, pointing at the diagram.

"Here, right?"

Charlie beamed. "Exactly. I already started the analysis going. It should find the answer in a couple of minutes."

"It'd have to be a murder case within a set timeframe, which you consulted on and my team closed successfully," Don clarified.

"As you see, knowing these points of commonality greatly reduces the amount of data I had to analyse. It took a lot longer to figure this out earlier when I didn't have all the facts!" Charlie grinned, watching the computer screen. He could see the program was nearly finished. A couple of seconds later it gave out a smug electronic chord and Charlie lunged for the mouse as a case file flashed up. Don looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, he recognized the case immediately. An arsonist had used readily available chemicals – gasoline, ammonium, chlorine - and mixed them into volatile explosive compounds. Because of the explosive nature of the fires the case had been treated as an act of terror.

"Okay, I can figure out the most likely places this will be copied," Charlie was already starting the program, drifting off into the Land of Statistics. "And we already know the date."

"Yeah. Tomorrow." Don said grimly. "Okay, Chuck, I'm counting on you." He knew his brother was buried deep when Charlie didn't even respond to the hated nickname. Don sighed and headed back over to his cubicle, wondering if Charlie would remember the class he had to teach in less than an hour. Would it be unfair to let his brother conveniently forget so he could keep working on the case…Don shook his head, a wry smile crossing his face. That would definitely be unfair.

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Charlie stood at the front of a class of young adults. Dressed in a green collared shirt hanging open over a white t-shirt and with his hands in his jean pockets, the Professor appeared no older than many of the students he was teaching.

"For example…" he scanned the front row, his eyes alighting upon one particular young student who was slurping intermittently from a can of soda. "Let's say Tai here –" the boy in question looked up in surprise and his neighbours grinned – "is taking the train to school from his home in – where do you live, Tai?"

"Monterey Park," the student answered, placing the can in Charlie's outstretched hand a little guiltily. This, at least, was a question he knew the answer to.

"From Monterey to CalSci and he has, of course, his can of Mountain Dew with him." Charlie held up the can. "We can prove that there is at least one moment on the journey when the volume of air in the soda can, as a fraction of the volume of the can itself, is exactly equal to the fraction of the journey he has completed. For instance the can might be two fifths full, and therefore three fifths empty, at the precise moment when he is three fifths of the way from Monterey Park to CalSci. Note that we do not assume that the can is full at the start of the journey or empty at the end. Okay, we all know it's physically possible. Now we're going to mathematically prove it."

The students looked at each other blankly, the doubtful question "we are?" hanging unspoken in the air. Charlie grinned. "I see…it looks like I'm going to prove it on my own." He uncapped a whiteboard marker and began rapidly writing out the numbers and letters as he spoke, the marker squeaking as it sped across the slippery surface. Truth be told Charlie preferred the tactile and aesthetic sense he got from using chalk, but to his lingering regret CalSci had re-equipped most its classrooms with the more modern alternative years ago.

"The solution, if you have not seen this sort of question before, is actually surprisingly simple. For each x between 0 and 1 let f(x) be the proportion of air in the can when the proportion of the journey that has been completed is x. Then 0≤ f(x) ≤1 for every x, since the volume of air in the can cannot be negative and cannot exceed the volume of the can. If we now set g(x) to be x-f(x), then we see that g(0) ≤ 0 and g(1) ≥0. Since g(x) varies continuously with x, there must be some moment at which g(x) =0, so that f(x) = x, which is just what we wanted." He smiled charmingly at the class and was rewarded with a few weak ones in return.

"Come on, it's not so bad, is it? What we have just proved is a slightly disguised form of one of the most straightforward of all fixed point theorems, a one-dimensional version of Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem. There are many such theorems. They establish the existence of a fixed point rather than defining one or telling you how to find it. This is part of the reason they are important, since there are many examples of equations for which we would like to prove that a solution exists even when we cannot solve it explicitly."

Gratified to see that some, if not all, of the blank faces had resolved into what Charlie liked to call the "aha" expression, he glanced at the wall clock and realized the class was almost over.

"Alright, look over chapter V section II on fixed point theorems and have a go at problems one and two at the end of the chapter. We'll be moving on to multi-dimensional and later to infinite fixed point theorems next week - that's when things really start to get fun," he promised them, to a mixed reaction of smiles, eye rolls and groans.

It was already past four and most of the kids gathered up books and laptops, eager to be away, but a couple of extra keen students stayed behind to ask some questions.

"So topologists use fixed-point algorithms when working with shapes in Euclidian space -" Chalie scribbled a few diagrams on the blackboard, resisting the urge to look at his watch. Despite the huge workload begging for his attention, he couldn't turn away any interested students. Who knew what, if given the right attention and encouragement, these kids would someday give back to the field of mathematics?

Finally the last students dispersed and Charlie gave a sigh of relief, gathering up his own miscellany and striding down the quiet corridors toward his office. He didn't often feel tired, but the couple of hours he'd snatched on the couch in his office last night hadn't held out as well as he'd hoped and his recent trouble sleeping seemed to be catching up with him. He'd been up past midnight working on the code Megan had brought over – it had turned out to be more complicated and absorbing than it had seemed at first - and hadn't even gone home before heading over to the FBI office to work on Don's case in the morning before his lectures started.

"Okay, Charlie, prioritize," he muttered to himself, flopping down in his chair and staring with glazed eyes at what used to be his office, but now looked like a bomb had gone off in it, scattering papers, books and journals into all corners of the room, strewing them across the floorboards and under the chairs and table. The mess was even worse than Larry's office. But he didn't have time to tidy up. Maybe he'd make his grad students do it….

The code was begging for his attention. He had left his laptop running it through some algorithms and now he set about getting through the advanced security system he always set up when he was working on confidential consulting jobs. Within moments he was in and examining the results the high-powered little machine spat up for him.

His jaw dropped.

_No way._

His eyes flickered over the information. The decrypted message contained instructions, details that were familiar to Charlie. It was the arson attack he'd predicted for Don, and careful details of exactly how the fire should be set, with what chemicals and at what part of the building. Charlie gasped as the name _Eppes _leaped out at him – the mysterious sender even knew that his brother's team had investigated and solved the arson attack this crime would be based on.

He ran his hands through his mop of curls. Where had this message been intended to go? The instructive nature suggested it would be to whoever was being employed to carry out the actual attack. But coming _from _the FBI?

He flipped open his cellphone, hit the speed dial. Don needed to know about this right away.

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	3. Chapter 3

_((Thank you so much for the reviews! I am so glad you like it so far. Hope you enjoy the next instalment!))_

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Megan navigated her way through the maze of interlinked files that made up the FBI personnel database and tried – unsuccessfully – to ignore the trainee hanging over her shoulder.

"Wow," Shelley breathed as Megan typed in a search query and was rewarded with a whole bunch of files belonging to Agent Madden. "Oh, my goodness!" She squealed when Megan overrode a security code and started scrolling through a bunch of emails the agent had sent. Megan flinched.

"Shelley! That was right in my ear," she complained.

"Oh my gosh – I am so sorry Agent Reeves!" Shelley clapped her hand over her mouth. "It's just – you're so _good _at this computer stuff," she gushed. Megan stifled a groan.

"It's nothing special," she muttered, trying to concentrate on scanning through Madden's files.

"You're too _modest, _none of the instructors at Quantico could do it that fast," the trainee's tone was reverent. Megan heard a stifled snort behind her and spun her chair around to glare at David. Her fellow agent was staring pointedly at his own screen, but his shoulders were quivering.

"Ugh. I need a coffee…" Megan groaned.

"I'll get it!" Shelley leapt to her feet so fast the computer chair she'd been sitting on rocketed across the cubicle and crashed into Colby's empty desk, sending a couple of papers floating gently to the floor. "Black with two sugars, right?" and the trainee was gone.

Megan lowered her head into her hands and moaned.

"It's tough being a teen idol, huh?" David's tone was sympathetic but his grin was so wide it nearly split his face.

"Shuddup, you," Megan rolled her eyes. "I don't get it. Why is she _like _that? It's so annoying! She doesn't do it to you or Colby."

"Hey, you're the profiler around here. If you ask me I think the kid's got a touch of puppy love," David offered.

"Hero worship, more like," Megan grumbled. "I just wish she hadn't picked _me!_"

Colby sauntered in, tossed his jacket over his chair. "Hey guys. What's _this _doing here?" he muttered, giving Shelley's chair a push so it rolled back over to where it came from. Then he smirked at Megan.

"So I was just in the break room –"

"Oh no. Shelley?"

Colby chuckled. "So she's on her cellphone, right? Sounded like she was talking to some other trainee. And she's all -" he made a terrible imitation of a high-pitched, girly voice, "My agent partner is, like, _so awesome_! She's _so tough _and she knows _everything! _And her coffee is black with two sugars and she likes blueberry muffins the best -"

"Aargh! Enough!" Megan put one hand over her eyes and fended at Colby with the other. "I can't get away from the kid. She follows me _everywhere. _Somehow she even manages to arrive at the exact same time as me every day so that we can go up in the lift together."

"Really?" Colby was intrigued. He tapped his keyboard to wake his hibernating computer and opened the security camera program. "What time did you get here this morning?"

"Would've been about 8:15, maybe just before," Megan scooted herself over. Colby pulled up the footage from the right time frame and sped up the frames. "Yeah – that's me," Megan pointed to the image of herself approaching the front of the building along the sidewalk. "And – see? There's Shelley," as another female figure bounded in to the shot and greeted the image of Megan with enthusiasm obvious even through the soundless security footage.

"Wow," Colby agreed. "That's pretty good timing, considering that neither of you are supposed to start until 8:30." He pulled up another camera, this time one that showed the area where Shelley had come from. "Look at that!"

"What?" David was leaning over them both now. They watched as the figure that was Shelley hid around the corner of the building, peering out at intervals until she spotted Agent Reeves.

"Oh my God," Megan shook her head in astonishment. "She actually hides out and waits for me to get here?"

Colby grinned. "Got yourself a stalker, Megan?"

"Shut up, Colby. You're just jealous that she's not all over _you_ like the trainee girls usually are," Megan retorted.

"What? Would I ever –"

"Oh man, would you ever!" David rolled his eyes, still grinning like a maniac. Colby pulled his best 'wounded' expression.

"After all the hard work I went to, looking on the security cameras for you –"

"Coffee!" a cheerful voice sang. "What'cha all looking at?"

Colby quickly minimized the screen. "Uh, nothing –"

"Here," and Colby found his personal mug, the one with the picture of Thomas Jefferson on it, pushed into his hand. Shelley beamed at him. "I made for everyone. Latte for you, and with one sugar for David," she handed the other agent his steaming mug. "And black with two sugars for Megan!" she finished triumphantly.

Colby took his perfectly made coffee, trying not to feel guilty about snooping on Shelley. After only a week of shadowing their team the trainee already learned exactly how everyone liked their coffee. _She makes a good brew, too_.

Megan couldn't help smiling. Okay, so the kid was annoying, but it was also pretty cute the way she was so eager to please. _Like a puppy. Not at all like the usual hard-ass don't-mess-with-me types. I wonder how long she'll last..._

"Thanks, Shelley," she said, scooting herself back over to her computer screen and sipping at her coffee. Shelley resumed her position of peering over Megan's shoulder, and Colby and David glanced at each other. Colby shrugged and looked glumly at his computer screen. _Back to work, then._

All was quiet in the cubicle for another few minutes, while Shelley watched Megan delve deeper into Madden's files. Then the trainee spoke again.

"What's up with the blank emails he keeps sending?"

Megan frowned. "What do you mean?"

"See there, and there, and there…" Shelley pointed out a few files on the screen. "Emails, but look at the file size – only a couple of bytes, not even enough for text. Why would he send so many blank emails?"

"Let's find out," Megan clicked on one of the files. Sure enough, a completely blank email message flashed up. She moved the cursor down the page and paused. There – a tiny image of a paperclip. An attachment, disguised as an empty email? She clicked on the image.

A page full of numbers and symbols filled the screen. Shelley gasped.

"Agent Reeves! That's –"

"The same kind of code as we intercepted for Charlie," Megan finished grimly. She checked the other blank emails and found the same thing in each one. The numbers and symbols were in a different order in each attachment, but they obviously belonged to the same form of encryption.

"Who is he sending this to?" she muttered, checking the address field. The email address showed as . "Why do I have a feeling that's a fake address…" she sighed, keyed it in to trace anyway.

The trace came up blank. The email address didn't exist.

"What does that mean?" Shelley asked.

"It means whoever Madden is sending these files to is masking his email address," Megan ran her fingers through her hair and leaned back. "I don't know how to break through that kind of thing. But I do know who does."

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Don squinted as he attempted to decipher Charlie's hurried scrawl. "You said you decoded this, right?"

Charlie scowled. "It's the exact details of the arson attack I predicted. All the information is here – they're going to plant vats of nitro-methane and ammonium nitrate and use a countdown timer to detonate them tomorrow. You can catch them as they set it!"

Don tried to get his head around the situation. Could anyone have that much information about what his brother was working on? How could they, when the case wasn't even open, wasn't an official consulting job and therefore had no paperwork? Nobody apart from his own team should know what Charlie was doing.

Don didn't have the answers to any of these questions. He pushed his doubts aside for now and focussed on what he _could _control.

"It doesn't give the location," he pointed out.

"No, but it will be one of the five places I found for you this morning. With this additional information I may be able to narrow it down even further. I'm sure there's something in this, something I'm not seeing…if I can go to the places I've identified as likely targets and have a look around…"

"Hold it, Charlie. You're not going anywhere some crazy people are going to be planting a nitro-methane bomb!" Don interrupted.

"Don," Charlie face showed his frustration. "The information here says they aren't even going to be planting the chemicals until tomorrow. I need to go down there and get the real picture. The size and layout of the buildings, the dynamics for maximum damage…I need to see the actual locations to help my statistical model."

Don frowned. He always had misgivings about taking Charlie to potential crime scenes and this was no exception. He also made it a point never to trust intercepted messages - they never gave you the whole picture no matter how detailed they were. However…if Charlie could narrow down the likely places, he could make better use of manpower, place more agents at the buildings his brother assigned a higher probability.

"All right, but you gotta stay in the car, you hear me?" he agreed reluctantly, watched Charlie's mouth open as if to protest, then close. Charlie nodded demurely, the picture of innocence. Don's eyes narrowed. If he knew his brother, Charlie was thinking he could talk Don around once they got to the scene. _So not gonna happen, buddy._ "Colby, Megan, Ramirez! We're heading out."

"Don, we might have found something on Agent Madden," Megan announced as they headed for the lift. She held up a USB drive. "He's sent several blank email messages, with encrypted attachments, to the same email address. The address is fake, we had no luck tracing it, but I did manage to save the file paths so Charlie can have a go at it."

"No problem," Charlie reached for the data stick. "I'll work on it in the car."

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The sun had set but the glow of millions of city lights amidst polluted air coloured the sky a deep amber. The light from Charlie's laptop illuminated his face with an eerie glow. Colby and Megan had taken a second SUV and had followed Don's vehicle for most of the way to the warehouse location, before turning off to come at the building from the rear. Don pulled up alongside the railroad tracks and turned off the engine.

The area was industrial and run down, the street wide and dusty, lined by blank-faced warehouses on one side with a high chain-link fence separating the road from the train tracks on the other side. Litter clogged the drains and caught, flapping slightly, in the rusty links of the high fence. An ancient semi-trailer was parked along the fence line. Not a single person was visible as far along the street as Don could see. _Perfect place to set a building alight - no witnesses._

"There's something here, Don…it looks like the coded message you gave me? It came from Agent Madden's computer. Huh -" Charlie broke off for a second as something pinged. The program he'd been running the encrypted files through had just finished. Charlie opened the first file as Don spoke. His eyes flickered rapidly over the decrypted information.

"Damn. What the hell is he playing at?" Don pulled his radio from the holster to call it in, but the machine chose that moment to crackle into life.

"Don! These are –"

"Don, we've been in a wreck," Megan's voice interrupted Charlie through the radio. Her tone was strained. "Truck just came out from nowhere -"

"What?! Are you all ok?" Charlie was staring at him in alarm. _Something's wrong. Really wrong. Gotta get out of here!_ Damn it, he _knew _it had been a bad idea to let Charlie come!

"I –"

CRASH! The driver's side window exploded into a mass of flying broken glass.

"What the -!" Don's radio exploded in his hand. Shreds of plastic forced their way into his palm. A second bullet screamed past Charlie's startled face. "Get down!" his hand found the back of Charlie's head and shoved. His brother yelped in shock.

"Down, below the dash –" ducking below the window level himself. "3695, shots fired!" Thank God for his cell with HQ on speed dial. Ignore his injured hand, even as blood dripped down his forearm. Gun out.

"Copy that 3695. What is your position?" the oh-so-calm voice from HQ responded. Don was suddenly aware of the shaking body crouched beside the seat, clutching his laptop to his chest like a comfort blanket, huge brown eyes fixed on Don. Crap. The one time he let Charlie come with him! Dad would kill him.

_3695. _Charlie's shocked mind was running at hyper-speed. _3695, a composite number with factors of 5 and 739, both of which are prime numbers. Sum of the divisors is 4440, which also happens to be the last four digits of Amita's cellphone number, probability of that happening 3.28 million to one against. Binary numeral 111001101111, octal 7157 – God, that was close! –_

"Intersection of 65th Drive and – damn! –" Duck the next round of bullets. Take a couple of blind shots out of the window. _What am I even shooting at?_

_- Square 13653025, square root 60.78651, sine 0.468, cosine 0.884, tangent 0.5296…the strange staccato rhythm of bullets hitting the car building into a fractal pattern in his mind…_

Don popped his head up momentarily. Need to get a fix on whoever was firing on them. Nothing. Must be a sniper inside the warehouse building. A set-up? Sure felt like it. What to do? Yet more shots peppered the driver's side of the vehicle. _There go the tyres._ Heck, his car was gonna be a write-off at this rate.

"Don – Don!" Charlie tugged at his sleeve. "The shots – they've started hitting the rear, Don they're trying to ignite the gas tank –"

Okay, they could collect a bullet in the back running away, or they could get fried when the Suburban exploded into a fireball. There was a semi-trailer about twenty metres away. Don opted to take their chances with a straight run for cover.

"Charlie, get out your side and stay low. We'll break for the truck there." It was too far. Run twenty metres through a hail of bullets? It was not a happy thought, but there was no better choice. He had his flak vest on; wished he could get it onto Charlie but there was no time; if he stayed in front of his brother he could try and cover him. Charlie scrambled out of the door, hit the dirt. Hell, the man was still clutching the wretched laptop. Don climbed over the seat and followed suit.

"Okay, you stay behind me, got it?" Once they got away from the danger of the vehicle he could try and take out wherever the sniper was. Damn it, where was his backup?

"GO!"

They hadn't taken three steps when the SUV exploded.

A great fireball engulfed the truck. The blast wave knocked the two brothers off their feet. The kinetic energy hit Don like a wall, lifted him through the air. Slammed him down onto the hard concrete road. All the air brutally forced from his lungs. Consciousness left him so rapidly he barely saw it go.

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	4. Chapter 4

_((Again, thank you so much to everyone who left a review. You make me so happy! ^_^ I hope you enjoy this next chapter!))_

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Charlie felt himself lifted, roughly, by the arms and legs, and then fell a short moment, hitting a hard metal surface. He thought he screamed – if he didn't, he sure meant to – and attempted to curl in on his right side where a centre of white agony sent stabs of pain right down into his hip and up into his chest. The intense pain helped to bring him round and he realized he was holding his breath, clenching his fists so hard that the nails bit into the palms of his hands. He became aware of voices, and then felt another body crash down next to him. _Don._

"Is he alive?" a man's voice asked. Charlie kept his eyes closed, frozen.

"How'm I supposed to know?" someone growled in reply. "The kid is, anyway. That oughta be enough -"

"Get their cell phones, radios, anything –"

By 'the kid', Charlie supposed they meant him. He barely managed not to flinch as rough hands checked the pockets of his jeans and jacket, locating his cell phone and taking it out. He distanced himself from his physical body, taking refuge in calculating the odds that a 28-year-old could be mistaken for a "kid", including such factors as clothing, hairstyle and tenured Professorship. "And the FBI guy, they sometimes wear GPS tracers, check his ankle."

"Got two cells, a watch and an earpiece. No sign of a GPS thing on the guy," the second, deeper voice returned. "Both of them are bleeding, y'know," it was a dispassionate observation, devoid of either concern or malice.

"For our sake hope they last the trip, the boss wanted them both alive –" the first voice was cut off as a door slammed.

A minute passed, and then the ground shuddered with the sound of an engine starting, telling Charlie that he was in the back of a truck. How ironic would it be if it was the one he and Don had been trying to get to?

Risking opening his eyes, Charlie glanced around, the first instant confirming his suspicion that he was inside the back of a large, empty metal truck. It was dark, but a high window to the cab area let a little city light in and his eyes were already adjusting. The truck was moving and picking up speed. Charlie's eyes fell upon the motionless figure that lay a couple of metres away from him.

"Don? Don!" he gasped, slowly pushing himself up on his right arm, hugging the left to his injured side. His brother's head was turned away from him and Charlie could see the short dark hair was wet, becoming matted. Charlie's heart went cold. Don had gotten a head injury. Had it happened during the explosion, or had his brother tried to fight their captors? It didn't matter now. What mattered was that Don was out cold and Charlie didn't have a clue what to do.

The bouncing and swaying of the truck as it turned corners was causing him considerable pain but his first thoughts went to Don. He had to protect his brother's head from bouncing against the metal and making the injury worse. He gritted his teeth and crawled one-handed over to where Don lay near the wall, hugging his right arm against his injured side. His brother lay completely motionless, and trembling, Charlie did something he had never imagined he would have to do.

He placed his index and middle fingers against the jugular vein and waited to feel a pulse.

There! Charlie closed his eyes momentarily as the thrum of life beat against his fingertips. The beat seemed regular but faint against his fingers. Was it weak? For the first time Charlie wished that one of his multiple doctorates was in the realm of medical knowledge. He could analyse the pace of Don's heartbeat, but he didn't have the skill to judge whether it was normal. Still, for now it was enough that Don was alive. He would probably wake up soon, he had a hard head. _Remember when he got slammed in the head with that baseball bat when he was thirteen? _Charlie reminded himself. _Everyone thought his skull would be shattered, and he woke up three minutes before the ambulance came with little more than a headache._

"Don? Don, wake up," he said, repeating the words a few times, but to no avail. Charlie shrugged out of his blazer and ripped out part of the synthetic liner, using it as a bandage to try and put some pressure on the laceration. It wasn't exactly the best material to absorb liquid but he had nothing better to use. He then folded the blazer, gently lifted Don's head and placed it on the makeshift pillow. Sighing, Charlie then decided he had better stop putting it off and look at his own injury. He could feel an ominous trickling down his side that told him he was bleeding and that would need to be stopped. Carefully he unbuttoned his shirt and lifted the t-shirt he wore under it. God, he was no good with this kind of thing. That was why Don was the FBI agent and he was the math professor. He hadn't even completed his first aid certificate.

In the low light it was difficult to see what had happened, and blood kept welling up and getting in the way. He eased himself painfully out of his shirt and used the sleeve to try and wipe some away. _The shirt was ruined anyway._ Something small and sharp seemed to have pierced his side. He could see an entry wound close to where he thought his right kidney was, but there was no exit wound. That told Charlie that whatever had hit him, it was still in there. Shrapnel from the explosion? Or had a bullet managed to hit him in the seconds before the explosion and he hadn't realized? Charlie shivered at the idea he might have been shot. After dreaming about it every time he tried to sleep, it seemed really unfair to have to suffer through it in daytime as well. Still, he was alive, and the pain, while definitely making itself known, was not growing worse, so it seemed he had been lucky and it hadn't found an internal organ. _Better leave it in, it'll help stop the bleeding, _he thought, then almost laughed at himself. As if he had any choice in the matter!

Wadding up the shirt, he gritted his teeth and pressed it against his side. His breath was loud in his ears. _Pain now, or death later, _he told himself stubbornly, keeping the pressure on. He realized he could use the shirt sleeves as a makeshift bandage, by tying them tightly round his waist and using the rest of the shirt as padding for the wound. It took a few minutes of painful manoeuvring, but eventually he had a fairly efficient bandage putting pressure on the injury and was able to turn his attention back to his brother. Apart from shallow scrapes and cuts on Don's arms that mirrored similar such lacerations on Charlie's, he noticed Don's hand was also bleeding and closer examination showed several shards of plastic from the radio embedded into his brother' palm. Wincing, Charlie carefully pulled out the ones he could get to with his fingernails and wrapped Don's hand up in more of his torn blazer liner.

The truck was still moving at a high speed. Charlie estimated they had been travelling for at least half an hour, though with his brief blackout he couldn't be sure, and they'd even taken Don's watch. Charlie shut his eyes and wished himself anywhere but here.

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"Don! Don, wake up!" Don groaned. God, his head hurt_. Leave me alone Charlie…_

_"Donnie…wake up! You said you'd play baseball with me today. You promised." A pair of huge brown eyes stared soulfully at Don. Charlie was kneeling on his bed, bouncing up and down a little, causing the mattress to shake._

_"Get off me," Don growled, glaring at his brother though half-shut eyes. _

_"But you promised_…_" Charlie's voice quivered. Tears welled up and threatened to spill over. _

_"I told you, get off." Don glanced over at the alarm clock. "Damn it, it's only 6:30! I'm not playing baseball with you at 6:30! Go away. Go back to sleep."_

_"But you promised…" _

Hold on a minute. Charlie wasn't seven years old.

What was going on? Don tried to open his eyes, but they refused to obey his command. Charlie was shaking his arm and Don could hear a panicked quiver in his brother's voice. Don made a supreme effort and rolled his head toward the sound of his brother's voice.

"Charlie?"

"Don!" Charlie gasped. "Thank God…you were out for so long – I thought –" Charlie's voice broke and Don attempted a grin, anything, to try and reassure his brother.

"Have to try harder than that…to get rid of me…" he forced out through the agony pounding in his skull. Charlie giggled, too high-pitched and too long. _Please buddy, don't get hysterical, I can't cope with that right now._ Don brought his hand up to his face, rubbing it gently over his eyes. A pale blur that must be Charlie – or perhaps two of him - weaved sickeningly in his view.

"Can't you stay still for a second…" he grumbled. There was a pause.

"I'm not moving, Don," Charlie said nervously.

"God, everything's one massive blur…must've hit my head on something …" Don shut his eyes again. It was better than watching two blurred Charlies shifting dizzily in and out of focus.

"I guess you hit it on the ground. Do you mean you can't see?" Charlie's voice sounded suspiciously tearful.

"Not so good as I'd like, but hey, it's okay, it's gonna be okay," Don repeated. It was horrible not to be able to even focus his eyes, but he forced the fear and helplessness down, locking it away, where Charlie couldn't find it.

"Concussion can be associated with temporary blurred or double vision," Charlie recited after a while, and Don was thankful that the tremble had nearly gone from his voice. "It's just a concussion…that's not such a big deal, you've had it before." He sounded like he was convincing himself just as much as his brother. Don grasped at the offered straw.

"Yeah, you're right buddy. I'll be fine before you know it." Now what? "Charlie, I need you to describe where we are…see if we can escape."

"Okay…it's a concrete warehouse, pretty big; I'd say approximately 12,500 square metres. Rollup doors for truck loading, all closed and locked. No windows, there are skylights but at least two stories up and no way to get up there." Don frowned, none of that was any use.

Charlie continued. "There's an internal door and also a fire exit but they're both locked - I already checked. There's a truck. I think that's what they brought us here in…" he trailed off.

"There's a truck here? Charlie, go see if it's locked. That could be our way out of here." Don instructed.

"Okay." Don heard Charlie's footsteps shuffle away from him. His brother sure wasn't breaking any speed records. Then the clunk of a car door handle echoed from some distance away.

"It's open Don, but the keys aren't here," Charlie called over. _Great. _Don visibly steeled himself to move. Slowly he pushed himself onto his side and pressed up until he was on his hands and knees.

"We don't need the keys. You're going to hotwire it."

"Uh…I am?" Charlie sounded very dubious. "Don, I don't have a clue how to hotwire a truck – or anything else, for that matter."

Don grinned humourlessly. "Help me up. Let's get over there."

Charlie came shuffling back over to where Don knelt. _What is wrong with him?_ But Don had to focus on getting himself mobile. Charlie was walking, talking, therefore must be okay, right? An arm slid around his waist as Charlie took his weight on his shoulder and they struggled to their feet. Don gasped as his head thumped painfully, his loss of vision combining with disrupted equilibrium and forcing him to lean heavily on his brother. It felt like there was an earthquake surging and rolling beneath his feet.

"Okay," Don ground out when the floor started feeling less like the deck of a sinking ship. "Guide me over. Sorry, kiddo - guess my balance is shot."

Charlie's breath was coming hard, like Don's, but when he spoke his voice was steady.

"I won't let you fall. Trust me."

_C'mon, Eppes, stop wimping about and deal with it…nobody said it was gonna be easy…you're not gonna die from a little headache, okay? _Don chanted in his head as they began the slow and torturous shuffle towards the truck. The distance between the brothers and the blurred shape that was the truck seemed to stretch out into miles.

_Thank God._ They made it. Charlie guided Don's hand to the cold metal of the truck cab and Don leaned against it, taking his weight off Charlie. Charlie grabbed the door handle and Don began to slowly, painfully climb in to the passenger side, Charlie helping where he could.

Finding the seat more by touch than sight, Don gingerly rested his head back. Charlie closed the door and Don heard his footsteps moving round the front of the truck. It was like his sense of hearing was becoming more acute, trying to make up for the loss of vision. He was sure Charlie wasn't moving normally.

"You okay, buddy?" Don asked when Charlie opened the driver's side door. "Sounds like you're limping a bit -"

"I'm fine," Charlie said quickly. "So, you're going to talk me through hotwiring this thing? How come you know how to do that anyway?"

Distracted, Don gave the ghost of a smile. "You really don't want to know…okay, listen up." He began describing what to do, picturing the wiring in his head as Charlie followed his instructions.

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"And just touch the red wire to the brown…be careful, don't touch the stripped wire." Awkwardly Charlie crossed the last two wires. There was a small hissing spark, and with a shuddering roar, the truck sputtered into life.

"It worked!" Charlie cried in momentary delight. He scrambled painfully into the seat and closed the door. And stared at the stick shift.

"Great job, buddy," Don sounded relieved. "Here's the fun part. This thing is big enough to blow through a rolldown door. You need to accelerate to the highest speed you can and brace for impact. And put your seatbelt on."

Silence.

"Charlie?"

_Uh, no, I haven't reviewed the required coursework for this class. What will happen when I flunk?_

_I think I can guess._

"Uh…Don?"

"Yeah?" Impatient.

"You know I can't drive a stick shift, right?"

More silence.

"Well, cra-"

"Don! One of the guys is back!"

"Damn it! Charlie, listen to me. Push the clutch down and shift into first." Charlie tore his eyes from the rapidly approaching man and did as he was told. The huge truck shuddered at the amateur shift but miraculously did not stall.

"Go, go, go!" Charlie rammed the accelerator. The engine roared in low revs. "Change to second when you hit 20!" The truck lurched forward. Don swore.

"Sorry!" Charlie dragged the stick through the gears. Cogs scraped and ground.

"CLUTCH!"

"Oh, right –" Charlie's knuckles were white on the wheel.

_If the weight of the truck is 15,000lbs, travelling at 37 mph with a kinetic energy of 66,720 N…_

Three seconds away…

_Then average impact force is 310,2290.78 N...  
_

Two seconds…

_...and the truck will break through a door with a resistance of less than 348.72 tons..._

One second...he closed his eyes -

WHAM!

The truck exploded through the door. The brothers jerked painfully against their seatbelts. The truck lurched and skidded, thrown off by the impact. Ripped away from the building, a large section of the metal door dragged under the truck with a hideous screeching clang.

"Keep going!" Don yelled as Charlie fought the wheel, losing track of the accelerator.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! "They're shooting at us!"

"It's okay – the truck can take it. Just keep going – get out of range." They skidded through the gates and out onto the road.

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	5. Chapter 5

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Don couldn't relax. They were out of range, but not out of danger.

"Did you see any other vehicles?" he asked. If you discounted Charlie's driving ability, which Don placed as his most immediate peril, the greatest threat now was pursuit.

"Not in the warehouse itself. This is the truck they brought us here in, there might be other cars around but I didn't see any," Charlie was trying to focus on changing gear again. He could hear the engine straining in a way that his automatic never did and figured it meant he should go up. As he did so, Don passed his hand across his eyes as if it would help clear the haze that clouded his vision.

"Is it getting better?" Charlie asked nervously.

"I think so…at least, I seem to have five fingers now, instead of more than I can count," Don answered, unable to keep the note of relief from his voice. Charlie closed his eyes briefly, then hurriedly opened them again. _Keep your eyes on the road, Charlie. _He winced. Why did the voice that spoke in his head sound so much like that awful driving instructor he'd suffered through at the age of seventeen?

The road they were driving down was a straight and dusty single lane. It was obviously some kind of outlying industrial area, a few decrepit warehouses dotted here and there amongst dry stubbled fields, but there was no sign of life, nor any other vehicles on the road as far as Charlie could see. They'd been brought somewhere far out of town, probably to be finished off quietly and dumped somewhere nobody would ever look, Charlie realized with a shudder.

Or perhaps not so quietly. There was a reason they had been abducted, Charlie had heard those men talking about "the boss" and how he wanted them both alive. _No thanks to those imbeciles that we _are _both alive, _he thought grimly.

"My laptop got crunched," he remarked ruefully.

Don groaned. "Seriously, Charlie, you're worried about your laptop at a time like this?"

"No – well, yes, but I mean, I had just decoded Agent Madden's email attachments," Charlie clarified. "I didn't get time to check them all, but all the ones I did see were your case files, in encrypted form. He's been sending them out to someone. I was also working on tracing the email address but I only had a partial result when we – got shot at."

"If I ever get my hands on that sonofa…" Don broke off, grinding his teeth.

"The coded message…it was a trap," he said after a pause, started to shake his head and winced at the motion. "Madden must have sent it and gotten an ambush laid. They knew we were coming."

"But why would they want to kidnap us? What does that achieve?"

"It could be anything buddy…when you work in my line of business you make enemies. People who lose money, family of people you put behind bars, friends, gangs…kinda comes with the territory, y'know?"

Charlie frowned. "It has to be more than that. Madden was feeding your case file information to a third party. Someone wanted to use your cases and copy them exactly. Don – did you ever look into any possible connections between the victims of the copycat crimes?"

"Yeah, I told Colby to look at it but he hadn't found anything yet." Don scowled. "There's got to be a connection. All the cases sent to the same person – that person copying those crimes to cover up his own MO."

Charlie glanced in the wing mirror and tensed. "Don! There's a car behind us – approximately 200 metres away but closing in."

Can you see any guns?"

"No…"

"What kind of car? Memorize the plates as soon as you can see them -"

"Okay…it's one of those sedan kind of things, kind of old looking -"

"Charlie!" Don groaned."At least tell me what colour the damn car is –"

"I can see the plates now…C381 –"

He broke off at the unmistakeable chattering sound of machine-gun fire. Loud clanging noises echoed, telling the story of multitudes of bullets spraying the metal back of the truck.

"They're gaining on us. Don, this thing won't go any faster!" Charlie had the accelerator floored. He was driving faster than he ever had in his life and the sedan just kept gaining. He knew that they were in trouble. Once the sedan grew level they'd be able to shoot him through the window.

There was a loud bang. The truck lurched. The brothers were thrown against their seatbelts as the vehicle slewed around on the road, tyres howling, showing Charlie horrendous detail of dry grass and scrubby trees on both sides of the road. His heart hammered in his throat. He fought the wheel, over-compensated, and sent them flying off the road. The truck bounced at high speed down a short bank, rattling every bone in their bodies. As they careered uncontrollably towards a line of trees, Charlie had the briefest second to regret the fact that Don was never, ever going to let him drive again. He closed his eyes, unable to stop himself calculating the force that the upcoming impact was going to have, and really not liking the answer.

_Wham. _Instant darkness stole him once again.

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The shock of cold water on his face had Don gasping. He blinked and spluttered, squinting up at a blurry shape looming above him. He tried to bring his hands up in defence but found he couldn't move them.

"He's coming round -" The words came from somewhere above his head. Don fought to focus his eyes and found that it was actually working. Slowly, a face came into clarity - a man, mid-forties, grey-haired and with startlingly blue eyes that stared down at him.

His hands were bound in front of him with a plastic cable-tie, and his feet had been given the same treatment. Don seriously doubted his ability to stand anyway, let alone walk. The room tipped and spun in a most disorienting way every time he moved his head, and each bone and muscle in his body was violently protesting that they did not like this kind of abuse. He was slumped against a concrete wall, on a concrete floor, in a non-descript grey room adorned with a few pieces of dusty grey office furniture.

He struggled to sit up straighter, feeling horribly disadvantaged down on the floor. _Charlie crashed. Why did I ever let him drive?_

"Madden. Mind telling me what's going on?" he rasped, his mouth dry. And then, more urgently; "Where's Charlie?"

"Agent Eppes…I –" the man's hands were trembling. What was going on here?

"Don't talk to him!" Another voice, deeper, spat from across the room. Madden stepped back and Don caught his breath.

Charlie lay limp against the opposite wall, his eyes closed, dark curls soaked and dripping water down his white face. Bruises stood out dark on the pale skin, but what drew Don's horrified gaze was the stain that spread across his brother's t-shirt, colouring white fabric a garish scarlet. _Oh my God. Did he get that in the crash? No - I knew there was something wrong with him before, but I didn't do anything…too busy feeling sorry for myself…_the thoughts hammered at his mind and he felt sick.

"The Professor hasn't responded quite so well to the cold water treatment, as you can see," It was the unknown voice speaking. Don craned his neck, trying to see who was speaking, but Madden – he refused to refer to him as Agent – was in the way.

"What have you _done _to him?" Don forced the words out through gritted teeth. A hot ball of anger grew in his chest, threatening to overwhelm him with blinding rage.

"What have _I _done? Oh no, Agent, you did this all yourself…you, and your little brother here. Stealing the truck – really, I was rather surprised you both survived the crash. Pleased, though. It would have been…well, _annoying_ if you'd died. Professor Eppes is quite some driver." He was _laughing_. Don's fists clenched behind his back, rage lending him strength and he lurched to his knees, almost managing to gain his feet before the room tilted 90 degrees and the floor slammed painfully into his side. A high-pitched tone rang deafeningly in his ears. _Stupid. Forgot your feet are tied. What are you gonna do, hop over there?_

From his prone position Don watched Madden move closer to the unknown man and murmur something. Then Madden moved aside, finally allowing Don an unobscured vision of the man who was obviously in charge around here. _Oh, crap._

He wasn't unknown, after all. That headshot had dominated the Wanted lists under the drug running headings for months. A wave of dismay ran through him. What on Earth did Jose Garcia, a well-known drug lord equally well-wanted by both LAPD and the FBI, think he was doing?

_The drug. The drug Colby found on the dead guy, Rainbow's End. It's Garcia, he's the one pushing it. This is all about the drug…_

Madden distracted him from this realization by approaching Charlie. "Don't touch him!" He snarled as Madden knelt beside his prone brother.

The grey-haired man turned. "I'm not going to hurt him, Agent Eppes." He held up a couple of packets, ones Don recognized as containing sterile gauze pads and bandages.

"We need him alive, _Agent Eppes," _Jose Garcia sneered, mocking Madden's words.

"Garcia. What the hell do you think you're doing? You got a reason for abducting a federal agent and a FBI consultant?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. I need Dr Eppes's help."

"What?" Don could hardly believe his ears.

"You heard me. I'm a business man, Agent Eppes, though my business operates on the other side of the law to you. I'm highly successful – as I am sure you know-" He tilted his head mockingly, acknowledging the fact that the FBI had his name and number and had been looking for him for months. "I'm an importer."

"Of illegal addictive drugs that your dealers sell for a hundred bucks a gram to teenagers," Don growled.

Garcia smirked. "If you say so -"

"Garcia. He's awake," Madden's voice interrupted. Don's gaze snapped around to his brother. Charlie was silent, but his eyes were fixed on Don. Don was faintly mollified to see that Madden had done a credible job of bandaging Charlie's wound. Not that it would stop him clapping the man behind bars for the foreseeable future if he ever got the chance. He raised his eyebrows at Charlie anxiously. _You okay, buddy?_

The tiniest of nods. _I'm fine. _A lie, but it was enough for Don that Charlie was even able to lie.

"Good. Dr Eppes, you need to hear this too," Garcia continued. "Recently, my business hit a slight set-back. A few months ago I was able to source a new product. I have a team of…executives…whose job it is to visit my source country and smuggle high quantities of this product back into LA. Unfortunately, a large quantity has gone missing. One of my executives has abused my trust and sold this product separately, for his own profit." Garcia scowled. "I cannot have this. What one does successfully, more will copy. In no time my business would be ruined. I need to know which of my executives is guilty, so I can make an…example…" the man's voice trailed off as a note of barely controlled anger crept in.

"Which is where I come in, I suppose."

Don was startled to hear Charlie speak. He shook his head at his brother and instantly regretted it as pain stabbed through his brain. Blackness hazed and drifted through his vision. When the world had stopped whirling and he thought maybe his head wouldn't explode if he opened his eyes again, Don found that Garcia had walked over to Charlie and was speaking more directly to him.

"…all the information you will need is on the hard drive," Garcia was telling his brother as Madden flipped open a laptop on the table. "And I'm sure you're quite smart enough to remember what will happen to your brother if you fail?"

Charlie turned a white face to Don. "It won't be necessary…I won't fail." He assured Garcia in a trembling voice.

"That's right. You won't." Garcia hauled Charlie to his feet, dumping him onto the chair in front of the laptop. "Get to work."

Then Madden was crouched in front of Don, staring at him with startlingly bright blue eyes. It was freaky how Don kept zoning out – when had Madden approached him? _Must be the concussion._

"Agent Eppes…for what it's worth…I never meant it to turn out this way." Madden's voice was ragged and barely audible. He glanced over his shoulder, checking that Garcia was still engrossed with Charlie.

Don too kept his voice down. "What the hell do you mean? How was it _meant _to turn out? I know you've been feeding Garcia our case files. Why?" He would rather put his fist through Madden's face than talk to him, but he bit that urge down. The man looked like he was about to go over the edge. Maybe Don could get some information out of him that would be worth more than the satisfaction of seeing the man's lights go out.

"You know about the case files already?"

"What, you think you're dealing with a rookie?" Maybe Charlie had worked it out in the car only moments before they'd been ambushed, but he wasn't about to let Madden know that.

The man sagged. Lines of defeat etched their way into his face, combining with the premature grey hair to make him look a decade older than he really was.

"Garcia approached me…he wanted specifics, case files. In particular, murders. He has a hold over me, Eppes, my sister…I couldn't refuse -"

"I bet he offered you some pretty figures too," Don interrupted bitterly. Madden looked away.

"It was never supposed to be this way…" the man appeared to be talking to himself, his voice was so quiet Don could barely hear him. "Lindy and I were supposed to be making a new life in Mexicali by now -"

Madden broke off, raised haunted eyes back to Don.

"I accepted his offer. With the hold he has, there are worse things he could have forced me into. At least this didn't hurt anyone. That's what I thought, anyway." Don noticed, for the second time, how the man's hands shook. "I chose your case files to send him, Eppes. Your team has one of the best solve rates in the country, let alone in LA. The AD thinks the sun shines out of your ass." Bitterly. Don mustered his best glare – not up to his usual standard, but still going some.

"Whatever. What did Garcia want with our case files?"

"Not yours, not specifically. I fed him the cases – could've used any. What he wanted, with any murder cases, was the details, so he could copy them down to the letter. The drug industry is a cutthroat business, Eppes. You know it; I know it – we catch 'em when they slip up, leaving evidence in murders. But Garcia, he used the methodology of other criminals to mask his own MO. Heck, it worked – until your brother figured out that the crimes were being copied." He grimaced. "Why couldn't you have just left it, Eppes? Both of you? I never meant you any real harm! But when Garcia found out you were onto him…he had to act quickly. Before you found out and took him down."

Don watched Charlie typing, ultra-focussed, into the laptop. Garcia was following closely, occasionally pointing out something on the screen or murmuring something. They could have been any businessman and consultant. Charlie's face seemed calm, but Don knew his brother. The tightness around his eyes, the way his jaw was clenched - the situation was really getting to Charlie.

He brought his attention back to Madden.

"So Garcia decides to kill two birds with one stone and kidnaps Charlie to make him find his missing drug cache, and then? You know he's not gonna let us go, Madden." Don looked squarely at the man. "He's gonna kill Charlie for what he knows. And he's gonna kill me so this can't get out to the FBI. You're really sorry about this, Madden? You don't want a couple more murders on your head? You got one way to make amends, Agent." Madden couldn't meet his eyes. "I'll cut you a deal. Help us get out of here, and I'll make sure you're kept safe." _Safe behind bars, _he thought, and knew that the same words echoed in the other man's mind.

"You don't understand!" Madden's voice was anguished. "I'll never be safe from him. Even in jail, he has influence. My sister –"

"That's my brother right there," Don nodded fiercely at Charlie, "My little brother. You want his death to be on your head? What if it was your sister in his position? Listen, we can protect her -"

"Hey, Madden!" Garcia's voice interrupted. The drug lord was eyeing them both with more than a touch of suspicion. "This isn't a tea party. Go make yourself useful and check the perimeter."

Madden jerked to his feet and strode towards the door without a backward glance. _Damn. So much for getting him on our side. _

He blinked the haze from his vision and focused on his brother. Charlie's eyes flickered rapidly back and forth, intent on the data sets he was pursuing. Beside him, Garcia was inscrutable, as absorbed as Charlie. Don couldn't tell from either of their faces how his little brother was doing. He could only hope that it hadn't escaped Charlie that this particular task was not one to hurry. Don had no illusions about Charlie's life expectancy – or his own – once the job was done. Garcia had no reason to keep them alive and several to kill them both. He had said as much to Madden, and it was the truth.

Charlie could calculate the square of the hypotenuse faster than Don could say Pythagoras, but sometimes the most obvious things escaped him. If Charlie was engrossed enough in the problem, he could easily forget where he was and who he was dealing with. Don wasn't sure that his brother could see past his own lightning-fast thought processes to the true danger that he was in.

On the other hand, Don realized, Charlie couldn't take too long over it either. Garcia had read the case files closely enough to copy the crimes down to the letter, and that meant he knew of Charlie's skills. If he suspected that Charlie was holding out on him, Don feared what the man would do to his little brother. He tried to catch Charlie's eyes over the computer screen - tried to communicate his worries by the mere force of staring hard enough.

Suddenly Charlie glanced up, looking over the screen directly into Don's eyes, and Don was startled at the depth he saw there. Despite the tension radiating from his brother, there was no sign of the panic that had gripped Charlie earlier. Instead, his gaze was full of reassurance. It was almost as if Charlie could hear the doubts that were running through his brother's mind.

_It's okay, Don. I know what I'm doing. Trust me._

Charlie's eyes flicked back to the screen, leaving Don oddly encouraged. He tried, unsuccessfully, to flex his fingers. The cable-tie was biting into his flesh as loss of circulation caused his hands to swell. His attempts to pull his hands free had caused the sharp edge of the tie to cut the skin and dried blood traced a circle around each wrist.

_Any time now, David. I'd give a lot to see you burst through that door right now. God, I hope Megan and Colby are okay. Who knows how bad that wreck was?_

He tried to console himself with the memory that Megan had spoken to him through the radio directly after the crash. If she was able to talk, she must have been okay…but what if there had been more men with automatics - what if they had tried to shoot up Megan as well as him and Charlie? What of Colby, and the trainee kid they'd had with them? If anything happened to Shelley, Don knew he would be in deeper trouble than he'd ever been in yet - you weren't supposed to get your trainee killed. Likewise, you weren't supposed to take consultants into the field – not even if they were your own brother. _Especially not if they were your own kid brother._ The excuse that he hadn't known it was going to turn into anything more than a quick trip to check out some possible building dynamics wouldn't get him very far with the AD – or, for that matter, with Dad. _You can't take risks with a trainee on board. Much less a consultant. Much less my own brother. What the hell was I thinking? _

Well, one good thing might come of it. He sure wouldn't be getting any more trainees in the near future.

He rolled his head painfully - his neck was horribly stiff. _Whiplash on top of everything else. This is really not my day. _Wishing for his team to appear in all their flak-jacketed, gun-slinging, blue denim glory was a fool's hope. _Get real, Eppes. What trail do they have to follow?_ Garcia needed nothing from the FBI save Charlie's knowledge, and he already had that.

Team Eppes sure weren't going to be getting any ransom notes for its leader or favourite consultant.

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	6. Chapter 6

_((Thank you all so much for your kind comments! I hope you like this chapter ^_^))_

* * *

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Megan glanced at her watch, and grimaced, realizing she was unconsciously imitating Don's stress-induced habit. The watch was on her right wrist, the left being unusually occupied by a splint and sling, and she'd had to swallow her pride and get Shelley to put it on for her. Both the trainee and Colby had had the luck to come out of that set-up wreck with little more than a couple of bruises. _Not fair._

She herself should not really be back on duty at all, but righteous wrath had kicked in a couple of hours after she'd woken up in the hospital, her arm reddish-orange to the elbow with antiseptic iodine and causing her drugged mind some serious concern over how the hell she had gotten such a strange sunburn. Once some semblance of sanity returned, ignoring the nurses' protests she had checked herself out, taken several codeine tabs and called Shelley, ordering the junior agent to pick her up, and to bring her flak jacket and her gun. _Might as well make use of the hero-worship thing. _Where David and Colby might have objected, the enthusiastic trainee had been only too eager to spring her from hospital.

The FBI had been crawling over the area where Don and Charlie had disappeared but it wasn't until Megan, her "sunburnt" arm now safely hidden by a thick white bandage, plastic splint and sling, had called Larry and Amita and suggested using Charlie's escape route analysis program that things had really started to happen. Despite the lack of Charlie's expert advice they had managed to piece together some likely escape paths in record time and Megan had taken the one that had stood out to her – it just felt right, and long ago she had learned to trust her gut instinct. Now she and Colby were headed out of town towards the run-down Geras Industrial Estate, with David and the trainee, Shelley, following in a second SUV. She pushed limp auburn strands out of her eyes – she hadn't even taken time to shower – and peered out at the passing scenery, which became more scrubby, dry and desolate with every mile.

Suddenly something caught her eye and she sat up straight, wincing as she jarred her hand.

"Stop! Stop the car. You see that?"

"Yeah – and I also see fresh skid marks."

Colby stopped the car and they both hopped out, David and Shelley following suit. What had attracted Megan's attention was a large battered path through a copse of dry trees and brush, finishing with the back end of a large truck. It was clear the wreck was fresh. Behind her, Colby stooped down on the road and picked up a couple of small metal objects.

"Guys – we got bullets – and looks like a blown out tyre over here," he called, eyeing the strips of torn rubber that littered the road. "That's probably what sent them off the road."

The agents picked their way through the battered scrub. Megan's face was a grim mask. She wasn't often afraid, but right now she was terrified that she was going to find two of the people she most liked and trusted in the world, dead in the front seats.

Holding her breath, she crept up alongside the truck, grabbed the door handle with her good hand and yanked.

The cab was empty. Megan let out the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding. Awkwardly she scrambled up to check out the cab. A huge branch had penetrated the shattered windscreen, punching through the centre of the seats and she shuddered. If that branch had been just a few inches to the right, or to the left, it would have skewered the driver or passenger.

Driver's seat is stained…yeah, it's blood, on the right side of the seat," she called down. Her sharp green eyes scanned the cab, picking up on something caught in the buckle of the driver's seatbelt. Carefully she teased out a strand of long, dark, curly hair.

Hopping down, she held it up for the others. "How much d'ya wanna bet that's Charlie's?"

Tensely David shook his head.

"If that's Charlie's, he was driving, and he was injured. If he was driving and injured, he was either not with Don, or Don was hurt so bad that he couldn't drive." Neither scenario sounded good.

"Well, at least we know we're on the right track," Megan said after a pause. Quickly they checked the back of the truck and found a black blazer lying crumpled and discarded against the side, and, more worryingly, a substantial amount of dried blood staining the floor.

"That's Charlie's jacket," Megan was sure of it. "He was wearing it yesterday. Get forensics out here and have them sample the blood but I'll take these odds any day. Let's keep going." She walked firmly back towards the vehicles, ignoring the building ache in her injured hand. "Oh, and David…radio for an ambulance to follow us out but to stay half a mile back until we call them closer." She didn't need to say why.

They hurried back into the cars and took off, tyres screeching on the road but the sirens stayed off. If it was a hostage situation – which it almost certainly was – Megan didn't want to risk tipping the abductors off before they could get to Don and Charlie.

Several tense miles later, the road passed a large, cracked concrete parking lot surrounded by several obviously abandoned warehouses, windows cracked or boarded up, litter blowing desolately along broken chain-link fences and not a vehicle in sight.

"Stop," Megan ordered. Even as the car slowed, her radio crackled into life.

_"Agent Madden to Agent Reeves." _Megan froze, glanced at Colby. Madden, the guy they'd been looking into, was now calling them?

"Reeves, go ahead." Cautiously.

_"Have received intel on location of Agent and Dr Eppes. Your people are being held in Warehouse C at the Geras Industrial Estate twelve miles east of town." _

"Copy that." Megan wasn't about to tell the other Agent they were already outside the Estate. She had no idea how the guy had gotten his intel and didn't trust it, but so far it was confirming what they had already come to. She signalled Colby to pull into the parking lot.

_"There are also three armed men within the building. Madden out." _

"Agent? Come in, Agent Madden. You gotta give me more than that." There was no response. It didn't sound like a bad channel - more like the Agent had turned off his radio or was simply ignoring her. She looked at Colby, who shrugged. _Fat lot of help you are, Granger. _

Carefully they climbed out of the car, David and Shelley joining them. All had their guns drawn. They couldn't trust Madden's information, but knowing that there were likely to be three armed men here made things quite a bit scarier.

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"Did you hear that?" Garcia's head jerked up from the computer screen. Madden was still out and there was no sign of the other two guys either, so Don assumed he was talking to him or Charlie.

"Man, all I can hear is my ears ringing." It was actually the truth.

"I heard an engine. Eppes! You better have something for me -"

"I'm close – I just have to follow one more line –"

The door burst open. Madden stood there, gun in hand. "Garcia! Two vehicles just pulled up in the lot – looks like FBI."

Garcia sprang up, snarled a curse. "Let's get out of here. Madden –"

Madden's gun was pointed directly at Garcia's head.

"Federal Agent! Drop your weapon!"

Don's jaw dropped.

Garcia's face contorted with fury. "You die for this, Madden! You, and your precious little sister!" he spat, lifting his weapon.

BLAM!

Charlie jerked violently away from Garcia. _A bullet from a handgun travels at approximately 1400 metres per second. It's physically impossible for the human eye to see the bullet at this speed. So how am I watching that metal pellet tear through the air and penetrate Garcia's forehead? _

Garcia staggered backward, crashing over the chair. Charlie shuddered at the crack of bone as Garcia's skull impacted the concrete floor.

But Charlie had no time to take in the sudden and violent death of his latest employer. Madden strode over, grabbed his arm with one hand and the laptop with the other, and pulled him towards the door.

"Wait! What about Don?" Charlie protested.

"Madden! What are you _doing?_" Don yelled at the same time.

"Shut up, Eppes, I just saved your ass," was Madden's parting shot. Don's confusion was outweighed only by his fury. The anger shot through his veins faster than any stimulant and he dragged himself up, pushing his bound arms against the wall for support. If only his feet were not cable-tied together. They certainly would have helped him when he tripped over the power cord of the laptop. Unable to catch himself, Don crashed heavily back toward the ground and his head bounced off the floor. _Ah, crap._

For the third time that day, everything went black.

"Don!" Charlie cried, but Madden dragged him away.

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"Check that out!" Shelley pointed to where one warehouse door looked like it had literally been blown off its hinges, its twisted remnants radiating out several metres. Carefully, guns at the ready, the team crept over to the large dented rollup door that lay on the decayed concrete.

"It's just happened, no oxidation on any of the exposed metal," Colby indicated the gleaming silver that showed where the metal had sheared apart.

"This is it, then," David looked around, on edge. "Backup is ten minutes out."

Megan ground her teeth. Ten minutes? Too long. Too much territory for the four of them, but too long for Charlie and Don to wait. "Tell them to hurr—"

A sharp retort echoed from within the building.

"Shots fired!" No mistaking that sound. Forget waiting for backup.

"David, Shelley, take the back. Colby, with me. Go!" Megan sprang into action, thanking whatever deity looked after FBI agents in car crashes that it had been her left hand that had gotten crunched – she could still use her gun. Halfway across the huge indoor loading bay a door burst open and a man began to step out. His face registered shock at the sight of two armed FBI agents pelting across the warehouse towards him.

"FBI, freeze!" Megan yelled but the man was slamming the door shut. Colby reached the door one second later.

"Bolted on the inside," he growled and set about applying his shoulder.

"David, you may have suspects coming your way."

"Copy that Megan," David's voice crackled back into her earpiec. just as the mass of muscle that was Colby's shoulder bent the inside bolt. The door flew open on a long dark corridor with several doors leading off it. As they crept down the hallway, covering each other, their earpieces spoke again.

"Two suspects exiting the back," David's voice whispered. "Both armed and sticking together. Damn!-" David's voice broke off.

"David? Come in! What's happening?"

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In the back lot, David cursed. Trainee Ramirez apparently had a death wish. Instead of staying at David's side where she belonged, the petite blonde had taken it into her head to sprint off after the two suspects who were making for an ancient brown sedan at top speed.

"FBI! Drop your weapons!"

"Damn it, Shelley!" David sprinted after the kid. He had no choice now, couldn't leave her uncovered. The two men spun, panicked, and one of them lifted his gun, pointing it directly at the girl's chest.

"DROP IT!" David roared.

Shelley darted in, under the path of the gun. Close up against his side she chopped down hard on his outstretched wrist. CRACK. The gun flew through the air as her other elbow rammed backward, catching him under the chin. Teeth clacked. His head flew back, tipping him off balance. A kick to the back of the knee and a hip driven beneath his centre of gravity assisted the fall. He crashed down onto the hood with a surprised grunt. A painful armlock soon had the man bent double, face rammed against the metal. David heard the familiar jingle of metal cuffs, wielded by steely hands adorned with sparkly purple nail polish.

"And don't even _think _about moving," the petite trainee's voice was laced with steel. The man whimpered.

If David hadn't been a seasoned agent, he might have dropped his own gun in astonishment. Instead, he closed his open mouth and pointed his handgun at the second guy, still on his way around the front of the car.

"Freeze!" The man took one look at David's cold expression and steady gun, and knew he was beaten.

Shelley Ramirez had just managed to disarm, pin and cuff a man at least eight inches taller than her and possibly twice as heavy, as fast as David had ever seen any veteran agent do it.

"You are crazy," he told her, efficiently disarming and cuffing his own guy. "You could have been killed! Listen, you don't just take off on your own like that. You wait for the agent in charge –"

"David? Shelley?" Megan's voice through the radio was sounding more and more frantic.

"It's okay, Agent Reeves," Shelley chirped, obviously delighted at being able to tell her heroine some good news – and probably just as happy to cut off David's reprimand. "We apprehended the suspects."

Back inside the building, Colby watched Megan stare at her radio like it had just grown teeth and taken a bite out of her ear. What the heck had just happened out there? "What, all of them?"

"Just two, Megan," that was David's voice. "If Madden's intel is right there's one more guy around."

"Okay David, hold your position," Megan ordered as they tried a door. Locked, and Colby winced at the thought of having to break down every damn door in this corridor. His shoulder was already complaining. But what were a few bruises? His boss, and the whiz kid, needed him.

However, to his relief the interior doors were more flimsy and surrendered and came quietly after a few good kicks from his heavy boots. The first room, and the second, were empty and thick with dust, obviously unused for months if not years. "FBI! Get your hands up!" he announced to every empty room.

It was less than a minute, a minute full of seconds that felt like hours until he smashed open the last door.

"FBI! Get your – ah, crap –"

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	7. Chapter 7

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"Where are you taking me?" Charlie panted, limping awkwardly as the pain from the wound in his side returned with a vengeance. Madden didn't slow up, continuing to tug the smaller man along a side corridor. The handgun wasn't pointed at Charlie, but the mathematician knew that that state could very quickly change if he didn't co-operate. Charlie had had quite enough guns pointed at him for one day.

"How much do they know?"

"What? Who?"

"The FBI. I communicated with Agent Eppes' team and they gave no sign of thinking I wasn't on their side. Do they know I was the one leaking the case files?"

Charlie gulped, wondering what to say. The gun swinging round at him quickly convinced him to speak. "They don't know, not yet," he said truthfully. "They suspect you but they don't have the evidence. I had only just decrypted your files when Don and I were attacked. Don knows, but nobody else does."

"That explains it. Damn it, can't you move any faster?" as Charlie stumbled. "What about Garcia's job? You find his answer?"

"I, uh –"

Madden gave a humourless bark of laughter. "Don't even bother, Eppes. I know you found it. I've read every case file you've consulted on. I know what you're capable of."

"You were Garcia's rogue executive."

"He pulled a gun on me. I had no choice."

Words Don had spoken after a particular case echoed in Charlie's mind. "There's always a choice," he murmured.

"Shut up!"

They reached a heavy door and Madden kicked it open, pulling Charlie into the parking lot. Past the door he had blown through earlier, two black unmarked SUVs with tinted windows waited. Charlie had seen enough FBI vehicles to recognize these, even if Madden hadn't announced the fact that the FBI were here before. But where were the Agents they belonged to? Didn't they know that Charlie was getting kidnapped _again?_

A third Suburban was parked out of sight around the side of the next warehouse. "Get in." Madden showed Charlie the business end of the pistol, just to make sure the mathematician wouldn't take it into his head to try anything. He needn't have bothered. Charlie was in no state to run anywhere, especially not to outrun a bullet. He dragged himself into the passenger side and Madden tossed the laptop over into the back and gunned the engine. The vehicle roared out of the parking lot with a spray of gravel.

"Understand, Dr Eppes, none of this would have happened if you hadn't gone and figured out that those damn crimes were copied," Madden's knuckles were white on the wheel. "Garcia was using them to cover his MO, for his drug related murders. When I found out _you _were looking into it, I knew it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came out. My FBI career was over. Garcia could have just killed you then, but he decided he could use you to solve his little problem!"

Charlie tasted the iron tang of blood - he had unconsciously chewed his lip enough to break the skin.

"Of course you would find out that I had stolen those drugs. Then Garcia would know, and I would be dead, and my sister would be dead. I didn't set out to kill him back there – but I'm glad I did all the same. He can't hurt us any more now."

"What about me?" Charlie wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"You!" Madden groaned. "I could kill you too, I guess, but there isn't much point now. You already got the FBI on my trail – they'll find it sooner or later if they haven't already. I'm gonna be wanted for information leaking and drug trafficking – they'll probably pin Garcia's murder on me too, God knows I had a motive. Besides, I never wanted to hurt you. You just got in the way." He paused, sighed heavily.

"I'm through with this, Dr Eppes. I have to get out of this country or spend the rest of my life behind bars with a bunch of guys I helped put there. You're the only one who knows the full story. I can't have you telling everyone until I'm well away. I'll drop you out somewhere in a couple hours. By the time they find you, I'll be long gone."

_Flawed logic, _Charlie thought. _The fact that you have me as a hostage will just make Don more determined to catch you. Of course, he'd have to be conscious first… _He bit the words back, stared out at the dry and barren land.

"We're already miles from anywhere. You're just going to leave me in the middle of the desert?"

Madden shrugged. "Guess you can always start walking."

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"Don. C'mon, wake up, man," the words found their way into the blessed darkness and would not let him rest. Somebody groaned. _Don? Oh. That's me. _He clenched his teeth together and forced his eyes open.

"Colby?"

"Yeah, it's me," his agent's face swam into focus. Strong arms gripped him, pulling him gently into a sitting position. The first thing he noticed was that his arms were free – thank God, someone had cut off that blasted cable tie. The second was that someone was using a jackhammer to great effect inside his head. Don fought the urge to whimper. _Crying like a girl – yeah, that's one sure way to ruin my hard-ass reputation._

"What's going on?" Even as he spoke, memory rushed back. "Colby - Madden took Charlie! We have to go after him –" Don struggled to his feet, refused to admit to himself that it would never have happened without Colby supporting most of his weight.

"Madden took him?" That was Megan. "Madden checked in with us a while ago – told us where you and Charlie were, then we lost contact with him."

"He did?" Don blinked. "Okay, I don't know what the heck he thinks he's doing, but Charlie proved that it was Madden who's been leaking cases. Actually, I think…yeah, Madden admitted it to me. Claimed he was under duress - didn't stop him from taking the money though." Hell, his memory of the last few hours was all screwed up. "Then – heck, the guy shot Garcia! Grabbed Charlie – c'mon, let's move!"

"Okay, but we need to get you checked out by the ambulance, you've got a head injury," Megan moved in to support Don's other side.

"Think I don't know that," Don muttered irritably. "Don't do that! I'm fine," he yanked away from Megan's grip, "and I need to get after Charlie, not sit around for some under-qualified medic to give me a band-aid. Let's go." He pulled his other arm back from Colby and began striding down the corridor, refusing out of sheer stubbornness to walk in anything but a straight line. It would be a lot easier if the floor would stop tilting to the left like that.

"Don, I really think –"

"Don, you should –"

"Colby. Megan," Don forced himself to calm down. Yelling was really not doing much for his headache. "I am coming with you whether you like it or not. That's an order, Agents. I am not going _anywhere_ until we run this guy down and get Charlie back in one piece."

The look exchanged between the two agents as they followed their boss out of the building spoke volumes.

_He's concussed. He needs medical attention._

_He'll never forgive us if we lose Charlie._

"Any idea where Madden was headed?" Colby asked helplessly, avoiding Megan's glare. _It's not my fault the guy can't tell when he's beaten!_

"The guy's near breaking point, if he's not reached it already. He seemed pretty torn up about the whole thing – claimed that Garcia had some kind of hold over his family. I guess shooting Garcia took care of that," Don's face twisted in a grimace, "but he knows he's still on the run from us for a major breach of security as well as the murder of Garcia."

Don paused, trying to recall what Madden had said. There was something there, he was sure of it…

He froze. "That's it! Madden mentioned something about his sister, that when this gig was over they were going to meet in Mexicali and start a new life. That's where he's going now. He's gonna take the most direct route from here to Mexico and he's taken Charlie as a hostage, damn him." He _knew _he was right, knew it in his bones, and _nothing _was going to stop him from finding Charlie and putting Madden behind bars. Forever.

Newly energized, he strode so quickly toward the SUVs parked in the lot that the other agents had to jog to catch up. David and Shelley had already gotten their two cuffed men safely into one of the cars and were standing guard, both looking ridiculously pleased with themselves.

"Colby, you're driving," Megan said hurriedly as they reached the Suburban. Maybe Don could bull his way onto the team when he should be on his way to hospital, but he sure as heck wasn't going to drive while concussed. "David," she called, "can you handle those two until backup get here?"

"Can do, Megan," David's voice was calm. "They're both cuffed and locked in. They won't be any more trouble."

"Great. Trainee Ramirez, you're back with us. We're going on a little trip to the desert."

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God, he was thirsty. When was the last time he'd had something to drink? Charlie couldn't even remember, which in itself told him that it had been far too long. His tongue felt like sandpaper and his head pounded. The place he'd bitten his lip had turned into a throbbing split that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. And his side? _Let's not go there._

To distract himself from his discomfort he watched Madden. The man had been silent for the last twenty minutes. Every time the odometer ticked over another mile Madden seemed to relax a little more. There was still no sign of pursuit. Charlie could tell by the angle of the sun that they were heading east, into the low desert. Madden had mentioned getting out of the country, which meant Mexico, so Charlie knew they would have to turn south at some point.

_I have to do something. I have to figure out a way to help Don find me quickly, so he can catch this guy before he gets across the border._

The car slowed a little and the blinker went on. Charlie saw the road they were going to take, one that would turn their bearing to the south. It was so small and inconsequential that it didn't even have a signpost – if there had ever been one, it had long gone and nobody cared enough to replace it. _Oh man. If we go down there Don will never find me! He's good, but he's not psychic._

He needed some way of showing Don where they had gone. _That's it!_ Carefully he put his hand in his pocket – yes, there were still a few of his business cards there – five, to be precise. He slipped them out and glanced at them, keeping them low beside his leg where Madden wouldn't see. A couple were blood-stained, but still readable. As the car turned off the main road Charlie wound down the window a little.

"What are you doing?"

"It's hot. I haven't had anything to drink for over twenty-four hours," Charlie's voice was hoarse enough to illustrate the truth of this statement. As Madden rolled his eyes and looked back at the road Charlie raised his hand up to the open window, cards hidden in his palm, and posted them out.

In the wing mirror he saw the white squares flutter and toss in the wind created by the movement of the car. Some came to settle on the road – others blew off into the dry, stunted bushes.

_Well, that was a completely pointless exercise. Nobody's ever going to see those from the main road. _

_Got any better ideas, Charlie?_

They bounced down the desert road. It was a single lane, narrow and badly maintained, and the scenery just got more barren with each mile. They were truly in desert country now. _Surely this road can't get much worse, _he thought, every bounce accented with a stab of agony. _It must lead to an illegal border crossing. Is it gonna be like this all the way to Mexico?_

At that moment, the tar seal ended and became a track made simply from hard-packed, rutted dirt. A cloud of dust billowed up behind the car. Charlie wound up his window, but the dust had already found its way inside. He coughed.

_Ow. Ow Ow OW. _There was no moisture in his throat to ease the coughing and each wracking spasm sent a wave of agony up his side. He doubled over in his seat, trying to take a rasping breath between each cough. Madden growled something at him, and then slammed on the brakes, muttering darkly.

Hands dragged him upright and held something to his lips. Water! Charlie grabbed the bottle and tipped the precious liquid down his dry throat. It was heaven. Nothing had ever tasted so perfect.

Madden interrupted his bliss by dragging the plastic bottle away. "Not too much. That's all I have." The agent had apparently retrieved the water bottle from the trunk, then come around to Charlie's side to give it to him. Now he pulled a smartphone from his pocket and swiped the touch screen.

"One bar. Might as well call now, before we lose reception completely," the agent said conversationally, as if Charlie was simply a travelling companion. He tapped the screen and walked a few paces away from the car.

"Lindy? Yeah, it's me…things have gone belly-up…I know…listen, you'll need to…" Madden turned his back on Charlie as he spoke. Well, it wasn't as if Charlie was going to make a break for it. Even if he could run, there was nowhere to go. Getting lost out here in the desert was as sure a death sentence as Madden shooting him in the head like he had done Garcia. Charlie was helpless, and he hated it. He wished there was something he could do. Don would be doing something, not sitting around waiting to be rescued.

Wait. There _was _something he could do. Something that was part of new skill set Charlie had recently learned from Don himself.

Charlie shot a furtive glance at Madden. The man still had his back turned and was speaking intently. Whoever "Lindy" was, she was taking up all his attention. Charlie leaned over, reached under the steering wheel and detached the plastic panel, exposing four multi-coloured wires behind the ignition switch. Thanks to Don's recent lesson in hotwiring, Charlie now knew what these wires did. They connected the ignition switch to the battery, and the battery to the engine.

He selected a red-coated wire, grabbed it, and yanked. It parted company at both ends from the surrounding wires with a metallic scraping noise_. _Quickly he fumbled the panel back into place and sat up, heart pounding. Had Madden noticed what he'd just done? He glanced back out of the window. _Thank God. _Madden was just lowering his cell and turning around. But now Charlie had the rather incriminating evidence of a 6-inch long, red-coated wire in his hand. Where could he hide it? Not in the car, Madden might find it. He twisted it up as small as he could in his hands and shoved it into his sock, pulling his jeans leg down to cover the bulge. The copper ends of the wire scratched his ankle but that was a small price to pay. With any luck, Madden would now be stuck here until Don showed up. Charlie hoped that would be soon.

Madden strode back over to the vehicle and climbed in, slamming the door closed. He tossed the water bottle back over and Charlie caught it gratefully.

"Thanks," he said, twisting the cap open and taking a couple more sips. Madden ignored him. He stuck the key back in the ignition and turned.

Nothing happened.

Madden swore, and tried again, and again. He clenched his hand and slammed his fist down onto the dashboard, making Charlie jump.

"Of all the times the damn car has to pack it in…" the agent moaned. To Charlie's intense relief it didn't even seem to occur to Madden that Charlie might have had something to do with the car's mysterious inability to start. _Charlie Eppes, underestimated yet again. Never thought I'd be glad of it. _Instead of interrogating him, the man jumped back out of the car and opened the hood. The sound of various and imaginative curses floated back to Charlie as Madden tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

The sun was shining in on him and despite the water Madden had given him Charlie was beginning to overheat. It seemed he was dehydrated enough that his body held on to any liquid it still had, instead of losing it as sweat to help cool his skin. After a couple of minutes he opened the door and slid out onto the dusty ground, seating himself in the small patch of shade provided by the car and leaning back against the chassis. Madden's head popped round at him, and then withdrew back under the hood.

Charlie closed his eyes and slipped into a semi-conscious doze.

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	8. Chapter 8

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Colby glanced in the mirror for the dozenth time. His eyes met Trainee Ramirez's and the girl gave him an anxious look in return.

"It isn't right."

Megan looked back as Shelley spoke. The young trainee was looking uneasily at the motionless agent next to her. As they'd gotten on the road, Don had dropped into sleep so quickly that it would probably be more correctly termed _passing out_. "He should be getting medical attention, not heading further and further out into the desert on a whim that Madden might be headed for the shortest possible route to Mexico."

"You want to be the one to tell Don we turned around from rescuing Charlie because he took a nap?" Megan's sarcastic tone was belied by her own anxious glance at the white-faced agent sleeping – _unless he's unconscious, of course _- in the back seat next to the trainee.

Shelley winced. "Nope." A week of shadowing the team was plenty long enough to know that you didn't cross Don. Not ever.

"A couple things you gotta know about this team, Ramirez," Colby added. "When it comes to crime-fighting math stuff, Charlie's pretty much always right on the money. And Don - he's got a real knack for thinking three steps ahead of a criminal. This ain't a wild goose chase. If Don has a feeling this guy's headed for Mexico, you better believe we'll find him eating chili enchiladas in Mexicali."

"Hey, we're gonna catch him long before that!" Megan protested. She turned back to Shelley. "You know, this team has a reputation for being the most stubborn in the whole of LA. Once we got our teeth into a case, we're not letting go. We caught that from Don. He's the most headstrong of us all. Er…no pun intended."

Colby almost grinned at that.

"Okay, okay," Shelley shrugged and stared out the window. "Sorry. It's just that with an obvious concussion – "

"Hey. Stop!"

Colby braked and pulled in where a side road joined the main one.

"What is it, Megan?"

Megan didn't answer, thrusting open the door and jumping down. Shelley looked at Colby as the agent walked a few paces down the side road and then squatted down, staring at something in the dusty road.

"What's she doing?"

"Beats me," Colby shrugged, opened his own door and followed Megan, Shelley right behind him. Megan glanced up as their shadows came over her. She picked something up from the dirt and held it up for Colby to see.

"How much d'ya wanna bet that they went this way?"

Colby took the item. It was a business card, informing the reader simply that Charles Eppes, PhD, was a professor of applied mathematics at the California Institute of Science. Charlie must have managed to slip the card out of the window. Colby felt a pang of anxiety at the obvious blood-stain browning one corner of the card.

"That is some damn good spotting, Megan," he admitted. How the heck had she managed to see that tiny white square from the car? "Look - there's fresh tyre marks in the dust, too. Let's go."

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"Agent Eppes?"

"Nnnh…" Don groaned and tried to force his eyelids open. Somebody was shaking his arm.

"Agent Eppes, there's a car parked up ahead, it might be Madden's –"

Now _that _got Don's attention. He sat up and rubbed his face, stared blearily at Shelley.

"Don, just ahead," Megan pointed. "Looks like they've broken down. The hood is up."

Don squinted against the bright sunlight as the car bounced its way towards the vehicle in the distance. He could see a figure slumped against the shady side of the car. It was still too far to make out any features, but Don _knew _that was Charlie. He couldn't see Madden. He must either be behind the hood or inside the car where Don couldn't see him.

He leaned over the back and grabbed a spare handgun, checked the clip. "It's them. Colby, pull up parallel. We surround the car and call for Madden to surrender. Shelley, stick with Megan," he ordered. "Colby, if you can, go straight for Charlie and get him away from Madden. Last thing we need is Madden hanging on to him. I do not want to have to bargain with this guy, hear me?"

They were just a hundred metres away. Suddenly the tall, slim figure of Madden appeared round the side of the car. He grabbed Charlie and yanked the smaller man to his feet. Don swore. Colby braked sharply, coming up parallel with Madden's vehicle. The team piled out, all weapons fixed on Madden.

"FBI! Drop your weapon! DROP IT!" Don roared. Madden had his arm locked around Charlie's neck. He held a pistol to Charlie's temple. His brother was struggling to breathe. _Help me, _Charlie's eyes pleaded.

"Back off!" Madden warned. His voice seemed calm, but Don could see the sweat pouring down his face. He dragged Charlie back a few paces. "Back off or I shoot the Professor."

"Not gonna happen!" Don took a step forward. His gun pointed steadily at the pair. Madden yanked on Charlie's neck, forcing a choked gasp from his brother. A wave of desperate fury washed over Don, threatening to overwhelm all his years of ingrained training, but he forced himself to clamp it down. Losing his head now would mean instant death for Charlie. He had to think clearly - to speak calmly - just like he would in any hostage negotiation.

_Only this isn't just any hostage negotiation. This is Charlie._

"It's over, Madden. You're surrounded. You pull that trigger and you're dead."

Madden's eyes flickered. A cornered animal. He licked his lips and jabbed the gun harder into Charlie's temple, eliciting a soft cry of pain from his captive.

"The car, Eppes. I get the car, or I kill him!"

Don could tell the former agent was losing his nerve. Madden had to know he was outmanoeuvred. He just couldn't admit to himself that he was beaten. "Not gonna happen," Don repeated. His mouth was dry. "You kill him and all that's gonna get you is four bullet holes of your own. Let him go and you live. You know it's over, Agent." Hoping the use of his position would recall the man to his senses.

Madden uttered a muted howl of rage, eyes darting between Don, Colby, and Megan. "I didn't want to hurt him," he cried, "but you're going to make me! I get the car, or Charlie hurts!" and quick as a flash he took the pistol away from Charlie's temple and drove the butt into the bleeding wound in Charlie's side.

Charlie's eyes rolled back. He went limp, held upright now only by Madden's arm around his neck. Don felt the punch as if it had driven into his own gut. He hadn't seen that one coming. His vision went red. He took a step forward.

BLAM! Madden's pistol fired. The bullet whizzed past his ear. Don hit the dirt, rolled up into a crouch, aimed, but - _can't shoot back. Charlie's in the way. _The barrel of Madden's gun gaped down at him. This time, Don knew, Madden would not miss. _I'm_ _dead._

Then – _what the-? _

A small fist slammed up from behind Madden, impacting the soft spot directly below the ear and behind the jaw. Simultaneously, a second hand chopped the wrist holding the gun. Madden collapsed soundlessly, bringing Charlie crashing to the ground on top of him. The gun skittered across the hard dirt road, kicked out of harm's way.

_Trainee Ramirez? How the hell did she get there? _Don's astonishment lasted for less than a second. He stumbled forward and pulled his brother's limp body off the former agent, leaving Shelley to spin the motionless man over and cuff his wrists. He barely noticed Colby and Megan running up as he knelt down and grabbed Charlie's shoulders, looking at his brother as if through a long tunnel.

"Charlie?"

A fresh rosette bloomed across Charlie's abdomen, the red fluid spreading to join the stains already colouring his brother's shirt. His eyes were closed and his face white as chalk.

"Charlie? Charlie!"

Megan crouched down beside him. "Don, let go -" she pushed Don's hands away from Charlie's shoulders, taking off her jacket to press against the hole in Charlie's side, trying to stem the rapid flow of blood. "Here, press - he's bleeding pretty bad - think that last blow damaged something further -"

Don felt the blood drain out of his face. He placed his hand where Megan said but couldn't get any strength behind it. He felt himself sway, the adrenaline that had kept him going trickling out of his veins and leaving him dizzy and disoriented. _Oh, no. _Don knew this feeling. He was losing his grip. _I can't pass out. Not yet. Charlie needs me -_ _God, I can't put enough pressure on this -_ desperately he cursed the weakness that was preventing him from helping his brother. _I have to press harder! It's Charlie's life at stake!_

"Megan - I can't -" his voice oddly distant in his ears.

"We had the ambulance follow us a couple miles back. Colby –" she didn't need to verbalize the order. Colby was already radioing the paramedics to get their asses over here, _now._

Don saw Charlie's eyes drift open, staring glassily at the sky. His heart pounded. _Don't die on me, Charlie. Just don't._ He swayed, almost losing his balance.

"Megan-" he tried to say, but his mouth didn't seem to be connected to his brain any more. All the colour was leeching out of his vision, leaving everything a glaring white.

"Don? Damn it –" he could hear the alarm in Megan's voice. "Colby, I can't leave Charlie - get over here –"

_Damn right you're not leaving Charlie. I'm fine – _but he couldn't form the words to say it.

"I got him." It was Colby's arms around him, supporting him. "Don, can you hear me?"

Don couldn't answer, couldn't hold himself up any more. He felt Colby lower him to the ground beside Charlie. The world tipped and spun, a vortex of whiteness and bright light._ So much for "I'm fine". _Don had no strength left to fight anymore. _Don't worry about me. Charlie…_

"He's in and out of it. Don! Can you hear me?" Colby again. "C'mon man, you don't have to do this. Stay with me."

_Sorry, Colby. I don't have much choice._

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To his dismay, Charlie became aware that he was lying in the road, gazing up at the cloudless blue sky. _Lying in the road? That's a sure way to get yourself run over, _he chided himself. He knew he needed to get up and move to a more sensible resting place - the ditch, perhaps - but somehow he just couldn't summon up the energy. There was thunder in his ears. How strange, when the sky was so clear.

"Don's out for the count. How's Charlie doing?"

_Don?_

"Charlie? Charlie, can you hear me?"

_Hear you? Just about. It's answering that's the problem. Someone tell me what happened to Don…_

"He's unresponsive…hell, his pulse is racing, Megan. I think he's going into shock." Surely that was Colby's voice? _I am not unresponsive! _Charlie protested, and tried to say so, but his mind didn't seem to be connected to his body any more. _How interesting. _

"He's lost a lot of blood."

"Put more pressure on. We don't stop this soon, he's gonna bleed out."

_Am I going to die?_

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_Lights. Noise. Pain. _

Colours swirl and haze giddily. He is at the centre of a vortex of sound and movement. There's something awful that smells like ozone and plastic covering his face. _Get it off… Don, make them take it off -_

"Shock…BP 60/40…do another IV, damn vein collapsed…" the words filter in and out. Charlie feels a needle pierce his arm. _60 divided by 40 equals 1.5…but 1.5 what? _

A sustained electronic tone fills his consciousness.

"What the -?"

"He's crashing!" Someone starts banging away at his chest. Strange, but Charlie can't feel it, though from the effort on the medic's face and the muscles bulging under the blue uniform he would have thought he'd notice at least a rib or two cracking.

The colours are fading. Shivers of black trickle down the edges of his consciousness and the voices drift into silence.

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_It is quiet where he is now, and it does not hurt anymore. He lies still in the soothing calmness, allowing himself to rest. For the first time since he can remember, numbers are not dancing through his mind, parading in front of his eyes, demanding his constant attention._

_He knows he has a choice to make and he knows he has to make it soon, but he is unwilling to leave this place. Relaxing further, he hears the tone of a deep, deep resonance that vibrates with a beautiful power through his entire being_. _In this curious state, Charlie knows what it is he hears._

_The Earth, as it rotates, emits a frequency, a musical note, at 7.83 hertz. But this frequency alters slightly, changes for reasons unknown. Some suggest solar flares as the cause, or electrical disturbance in the atmosphere, or the gravitational pull of the moon and other planets._

_Perhaps, Charlie wonders, perhaps there is a simpler explanation. Maybe the sound of the planet is influenced by the 7.1 billion souls whirling around it, each emitting their own resonance, adding their own harmony._

_If all ratios could be translated into sound, the music could be heard; a sound as powerful as the universe itself, yet as quiet as a single flower._

_As enchanting as the beat of a human heart._

_For some, music elevates the spirit to a place of supreme beauty._

_Charlie simply finds that beauty in numbers themselves._

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	9. Chapter 9

_((Well, we made it - the last chapter! Going up a bit early because I have to work late tonight and won't get it up otherwise. My eternal gratitude once again to OughtaKnowBetter for her fabulous beta-reading, and a big thank you to everyone who left a review so far - especially MsGrahamCracker for your kind words._

_If you haven't reviewed yet, I'd love to hear what you thought. I hope you all enjoyed the ride! - Emily))_

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Don sat in a horrible orange plastic chair and watched an IV feed red blood from a hanging, clear plastic bag into his brother's arm. The silence in the room was broken only by the regular beep of a heart-rate monitor.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands, almost welcoming the pain that stabbed through both his torn-up palm and bandaged head as he did so. The physical pain distracted him from the ache in his heart that twisted every time he looked at his brother's motionless form.

"How is he doing?"

Don looked up to see Trainee Shelley Ramirez standing in the doorway. She studied Charlie's unmoving figure and glanced at Don.

"They said the surgery was successful," Don wrenched his attention away from Charlie. "They found a bit of sharp metal in his side – reckon it came from the SUV when it exploded – then it caused more damage when Madden -" he broke off, unable to finish the sentence. _When Madden shoved his gun into Charlie's wound right in front of me and I couldn't stop him…_

"Wow. He was real lucky that didn't happen before, considering how much activity he did." Shelley shook her head in amazement. "Not woken up yet?" She moved into the room.

"Nah. Should be any time." Don looked back at Charlie. So unnaturally still. It wasn't right; Charlie was never still. He watched as his brother took shallow breaths but his eyelids did not flicker. _I couldn't protect him…_

Yes, the surgery had been successful, extracting a shard of metal that had come within millimetres of perforating Charlie's kidney. When Madden had punched the injury, the sharp splinter had moved, nicked a major artery and caused his brother to nearly bleed to death. When they told him Charlie had coded in the ambulance – told him that they'd had to resuscitate him - Don had thought his own heart would stop.

Everyone expected Charlie to have woken by now. After two days the drugs should have worn out of his system. Don hadn't missed the grave looks passed between nurses and doctors. What did it take for mere unconsciousness to be reclassified as comatose?

"And…how about you?" Now Shelley sounded tentative. "When you blacked out - the paramedics were worried about second impact syndrome –"

"Turns out my head is as hard as Charlie always says it is," Don cut her off. He didn't need her telling him how lucky he was. _He didn't deserve luck._ Apparently – as Megan had told him later - he'd still been unconscious at the time – he'd been rushed into an emergency CT scan, a neurosurgeon standing by to drill a hole in his skull to let out the building pressure as his brain swelled. Turned out he hadn't needed it. "It's just a concussion, no big deal." He just wished some of his luck could have rubbed off on Charlie.

"I head back to Quantico tomorrow, to finish my last couple weeks of training," Shelley said after a while. "I just wanted to thank you for taking me on and letting me participate so much in the case. I really learned a lot from you all."

Don dragged his thoughts away from the morose and into the present. _Enough wallowing, Eppes. Get with the picture. _He refocused on the trainee.

"Hey, no problem, Shelley. You did a great job out there. Guess I should be thanking you, too –" Don realized – "that move you pulled on Madden probably saved my life."

Shelley flushed, smiled back. "I'm just glad I could help."

"Well, you can be sure I'll let Tom know about your role in closing this case." He'd taught several courses at the FBI Academy and knew the director well.

"Thanks, Agent Eppes, that means a lot," Shelley's eyes shone.

"The least I could do," Don remarked. "I'm sure you'll be offered plenty of positions once you graduate, but if you ever feel like L.A is the place to be, there's a spot for you with me and mine." Wow. Had that really been Don speaking? Don with his 'trust issues', as Megan so delicately put it? _Guess she did save my life, and take out Madden single-handedly. Kind of makes a girl grow on you. _

"Oh my gosh!" Shelley looked like she might have started jumping up and down if it hadn't been an entirely insensitive thing to do in a hospital room. She settled for clasping her hands and beaming.

"Can I give you my number? Will you text me when Charlie wakes up?" she asked hopefully.

Don nodded, a little surprised. "Sure." They exchanged numbers, and then Shelley held out her hand for Don to shake.

"Well, see you around," she smiled. "I hope Charlie recovers well." She waved and left the room.

Don watched her go.

"Nice catch," a voice croaked from the bed. Don spun around.

"Charlie!" he exclaimed. His brother's eyes were open and he was smiling. It was a small smile, barely touching the corners of his mouth, but a smile nonetheless. "You're awake." He almost choked on the words, his relief was so great. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible. So you got her number, huh?"

The smile on his Charlie's face warmed Don's heart. He couldn't help but respond, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he grinned fondly at his brother.

"Oh, shut up. She just wanted to know when you woke up."

"That's what they all say."

"What?" Don had to laugh. It was such a relief to have Charlie back in the land of the living. "What are you talking about? Besides, it's true! Look – I'm texting her now."

"Already? Fast mover!"

"You little brat!" Don grabbed an ice cube from the cup beside Charlie's bed. "You must still be dehydrated. Your brain is malfunctioning." He pushed the ice cube between his brother's lips. Charlie spluttered, but the slowly melting ice liquid felt so good in his mouth that he settled for rolling his eyes.

"My brain never malfunctions," he mumbled around the ice cube.

"What's that? Your brain never functions? You don't have to tell me that. I grew up with you, remember?" Don grinned. The argument was childish to the extreme, but that didn't matter. It just felt so good to be able to joke around with Charlie, after coming so close to losing his brother forever.

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"Hey, guys." Charlie opened the front door and smiled at Megan and Colby, allowing them to step past him and enter the warm living room. "Thanks for coming -"

"Thank my personal chauffeur here." Megan rolled her eyes over at Colby, who shrugged and grinned. With her hand still splinted Megan was unable to drive and it was grating on her nerves. Luckily Colby was good-natured enough to not complain about his unwilling passenger.

"Good to see ya on your feet again Charlie," he said, just as a voice called out from the kitchen.

"Charlie you promised you were going to stay on the couch!" Alan's voice sounded rather grumpy. Charlie grinned mischievously at the two agents.

"Sorry, I lied," he called back cheerfully before whispering to Megan and Colby, "I'm driving him crazy because I won't stay put. He thinks I'm going to fall apart if I so much as take ten steps between the couch and the front door!" They walked in towards the dining room, where Alan's voice could now be heard berating Don for not getting to the door before Charlie.

"Why do I have to get the door as well? I'm helping with dinner, which is more than Charlie's doing!" Don protested, followed by the sound of a snapping teatowel as Alan swatted his eldest. "OW!"

"David and Larry are already here," Charlie couldn't keep the smirk off his face as he showed Megan and Colby through to the dining room.

An expression of relief crossed David's face as his teammates arrived sat down. Larry barely glanced up from a passionate monologue that had been going on since David had admitted physics was a closed book to him.

"According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality actually arises in the limitations of our language. It is not surprising that our language should be incapable of describing the wondrous processes occurring within the atoms, for it was invented to describe the experiences of daily life, and these consist only of processes involving exceedingly large numbers of atoms. Furthermore, it is very difficult to modify our language so that it will be able to describe these atomic processes because words can only describe things of which we can form mental pictures, and this ability, too, is a result of daily experience."

Charlie leaned against the table and smirked at Larry. "Fortunately, math is not subject to the limitation of language. That's why quantum theory as a mathematical system is entirely adequate for dealing with sub-atomic processes."

Larry sighed. "Yes, Charles, but for visualisation, we must content ourselves with two incomplete analogies — the wave picture and the corpuscular picture. The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use it for the interpretation of the experiments. However, he must additionally speak about his results to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in a more pedestrian language."

David shook his head. "Well, I'm definitely a non-physicist, and I still don't get it. I think old Heisenberg did a good job when he named it the Uncertainty Principle. It sure as hell is uncertain to me!"

Larry put his chin in his hands. "As Heisenberg himself said: after conversations with Tagore about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of quantum physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense."

David laughed. "Well, I guess if even Heisenberg was confused by it all I don't feel so bad!"

The doorbell rang again and Charlie turned, about to head back over but was stopped in his tracks by a bellow from the kitchen.

"Donnie! Get the door _now!"_ Don shot out of the kitchen door and almost collided with his brother.

"Charlie, for my sake sit down and talk to Larry or dad will never give me any peace," Don pleaded as he went to welcome Amita, and Shelley who had showed up at the same time.

When everyone was seated and served, Alan looked around at the gathered guests. Every one of them was dear to him. The three agents Don worked with and trusted as much as he could trust anyone had long ago surpassed "colleague" status and become close family friends, the beautiful Amita was so much more than just another grad student and he had high hopes for her and Charlie, although his youngest didn't seem to be picking up the hints as well as he would like…Larry of course was one of their oldest friends and was always welcome at the Eppes household.

The new kid on the block, of course, was young Shelley Ramirez, and Alan reserved an extra warm smile for the pretty trainee. She seemed like a nice girl, and smart too. He'd heard all about how she'd taken out that bad man all on her own. Maybe Don would like to show her around L.A a little…

"Thank you all again for being here," he began. "I wanted to offer you all my sincere thanks, especially to Megan, Colby, David and Shelley, for working non-stop to bring home my sons…and to Larry and Amita for your invaluable friendship and support through this difficult time. Without you all Charlie and Donnie might not be here today and there are no words I can say that could ever begin to express my gratitude."

He smiled softly at his boys, who returned the affectionate look. They weren't a demonstrative family and the short words were all that was needed.

"Yeah, thanks for saving our necks, you guys," Don added with the contagious, unexpectedly boyish grin that lit up his face. Alan was glad to see it. Don didn't smile enough these days, he decided.

"It was our privilege to save your necks," Megan retorted.

"I hear we're also celebrating Shelley's successful graduation," Charlie grinned at the young new agent. "Congratulations!"

"Thanks," Shelley smiled as the others clapped and cheered.

"It's no joke graduating from Quantico, I can tell you that!" Colby grinned.

"So Megan, what exactly did you do to your hand?" Charlie asked as they began eating, eyeing the plastic splint that kept her left hand immobilized. Megan sighed, foreseeing being asked this question many times before the splint was off and she finally got off desk duty.

"It was in that crash, the one that was staged to stop us getting in pursuit right away," she explained. "I was driving and the door got dented right in and trapped my hand behind the wheel while I was thrown sideways," she demonstrated the action, "it twisted around and one of the bones spiral fractured. It was sticking right up like this – " she showed the angle of how the snapped bone had pushed up from the back of her hand and everyone winced in sympathy. "So they operated and put in four titanium pins to screw it back together –"

"Because she made such a fuss at the hospital refusing to have a cast!" Colby interjected. "And now every single time she comes to work she's gonna set the security gates off!" He started cracking up at the idea of Megan having to be searched with the metal-detector wand every single day.

"Well at least in in two weeks I'll be able to drive again, instead of six to eight!" Megan defended herself, mock-glaring at Colby. David nodded.

"Plus you don't have the itching problem," he agreed. "When I broke my arm as a kid the itching under the cast was driving me crazy. I swear I lost at least six pencils down it, trying to scratch."

"I _know! _I broke my wrist twice already, that's why I refused!" Megan explained, stabbing her knife into her ribeye in the vain hope that it would miraculously disintegrate into bite-sized pieces.

Colby paused. _I really shouldn't, but…_"Not looking too _handy_ with that knife, Megan," he commented slyly.

Perhaps Megan could be forgiven for forcing Colby to drop his own cutlery and defend himself against a sudden stab attack with the aforementioned knife.

"God Colby, is that the best you can come up with?" David half-groaned, half-laughed.

"Like to see you do better," Colby returned, ducking as Megan gave up on stabbing him with a piece of cutlery and attempted instead to swat him above the head with her good hand. "Aw c'mon, don't take it to heart…let me give you a _hand _with that," Colby just couldn't leave well enough alone as he grabbed Megan's plate and began to cut her meal for her.

"Colby if you don't shut up making lame jokes and give me back my plate I will make Don put you on desk duty for the next few _years," _Megan threatened in exasperation.

"Oh, yeah? How're you gonna make me do that?" Don wondered, grinning at the unusual spectacle of Megan attempting to pull her plate away from Colby, who was fending her off with one muscular forearm and still managing to cut her food at the same time.

Megan gave him a sweet smile, desisted from attacking Colby, and pointed at her broken hand. "You owe me," was all she said. Don started to protest, was it _his _fault she had stuck her hand behind the wheel where it had no right to be in a car crash? But Charlie was still back on the jokes.

"I have a good one," he interrupted eagerly. "At least, my advanced calc class thought it was hilarious…anyway a constant function and e^x are walking down the street –"

"Oh no, not another math joke," Don groaned. He _never _understood Charlie's jokes, though it didn't seem to stop his brother from telling them.

"No really, it's good," Charlie protested. "Well, suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator and he screams, runs away and hides behind a mailbox. E^x isn't about to let this behaviour go unexplained so he follows and asks "Why are you so scared of that differential operator?" and the constant function says, "He's gonna differentiate me, and there'll be nothing left of me!" E^x puffs up with pride. He says, "Huh, he doesn't scare me, I'm e to the x!" With that e^x swaggers up to the differential operator and says, "Hi there! I'm e to the x!"

Charlie almost lost control here, but managed to hold it together long enough to deliver the punchline. "And the differential operator replies, "Hi! I'm d/dy.""

There was a pause, and then Amita started laughing so hard she almost choked on her asparagus. Larry rolled his eyes.

Everyone else looked at each other in complete and utter blankness. _That _was the punchline?

"Charles, simply allow me to bring a chain rule to the party, and e^x will be completely safe," Larry sounded a little smug. Charlie stared at him for a second.

"Oh! You mean… d/dy (e^x) = d/dx(e^x)· dx/dy so that d/dy (e^x) = e^x· dx/dy ... and this way no one gets hurt. Wow! That's great!"

"What the -" at this Colby started laughing too, "Charlie, how come it makes you so happy that e^x doesn't get differentiated?"

"It's amazing, I can actually feel my IQ dropping," Megan murmured as calculus-related babble erupted around her.

"Are they always like this?" Shelley's eyes were so wide that Don started to laugh.

"All the time, Agent Ramirez. All the time."

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THE END


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